Preparation of 3D reticulated ZnO/CNF/NiO heteroarchitecture for high-performance photocatalysis

•3D reticulated ZnO/CNF/NiO heteroarchitectured composite was synthesized via a novel facile two-step CVD route.•The 3D reticulated structure provides more nucleation sites for ZnO nanorods, and thus improved the absorption of the light.•The bridge effect of CNFs facilitated the separation efficiency of electrons and holes.

In this paper, we introduce a novel facile two-step chemical vapor deposition (CVD) route as a straightforward protocol for preparing a kind of three-dimensional (3D) reticulated ZnO/CNF/NiO heteroarchitectured composite. In the experiment, carbon nanofibers (CNFs) grew directly on porous Ni foam, and ZnO nanorods were seamlessly and uniformly grew from CNFs. The experimental results revealed this composite an excellent photocatalytic performance 2.5 times higher than that of regular ZnO/NiO composite. This is because of the following advantages: the 3D reticulated structure provides more nucleation sites for ZnO nanorods, in which the light would be reflected multiply and thus increased the absorption efficiency of the light; because CNFs formed two strong and compact hetero-interfaces with both ZnO nanorods and NiO substrate, respectively, it provided barrier-free access to transport photo-induced carriers (electrons and holes) between ZnO and NiO as bridge during photocatalytic process, which therefore greatly improved the separation efficiency of the electrons and holes. It is expected that the 3D heteroarchitectured composite will have potential applications in the areas of environmental improvement, green energy, water splitting, hydrogen generation, etc.

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