Gang Zhou

Hohai University · Key Laboratory of Integrated Regulation and Resource Development on Shallow Lakes, Ministry of Education

Fenton reaction is regarded as a potential treatment for antibiotics removal, but challenges remain due to the sluggish reaction kinetics of Fe(III) reduction and incomplete degradation from insufficient active substance. Distinguished from traditional Fe(Ⅱ) regeneration techniques, this work focuses on utilizing the aliovalent redox pairs and buil...

Electrocatalytic nitrate reduction into recyclable ammonia (NH3) plays a critical role in maintaining the global nitrogen balance and meeting the growing energy demand. However, the research on controllable defects of traditional semiconductor electrocatalytic materials remains lacking, resulting in limiting nitrate reduction reaction (NO3RR) activ...

The piezo-potential induced by stress or strain in piezoelectric compounds can produce an electric field, which has been demonstrated to be an effective technique for charge shifting or transfer in the domain of photocatalysis. In this study, a judicious combination of piezoelectricity and photocatalytic performance via [email protected]3@CdS compo...

Photocatalytic technology is an attractive and promising approach for nitenpyram degradation; however, how to ensure the carrier separation efficiency and catalytic sites exposure is still great challenges. In this study, we construct [email protected]2 (CM) nanohybrids with a 3D hierarchical configuration to enhance the separation and transfer eff...

While acidic oxygen evolution reaction plays a critical role in electrochemical energy conversion devices, the sluggish reaction kinetics and poor stability in acidic electrolyte challenges materials development. Unlike traditional nano-structuring approaches, this work focuses on the structural symmetry breaking to rearrange spin electron occupati...

Photocatalytic water splitting with simultaneous degradation of organic pollutants is an effective strategy to alleviate the increasingly serious energy and environmental crisis. However, the photocatalytic activity is restricted by the high charge recombination rate and limited sunlight utilization. Herein, black phosphorus (BP) with a broad sunli...

The elimination of salicylic acid (SA) pollution using low-cost adsorbents has attracted much attentions, but facing a difficulty of lower adsorption ability and rapid deactivation. From the viewpoint of reaction kinetics, the orbital interaction and charge transfer between adsorbent and reactants are strongly depended on the adsorption difference...

Organic pollutants can cause persistently negatively environmental and health effects. Photocatalysis is a promising strategy for the degradation of organic pollutants. Consequently, the design and synthesis of efficient and environmentally friendly photocatalysts for the organic pollution removal have received widespread attention. In this study,...

The simultaneous elimination of organic pollutant and heavy metals using efficient catalysts has attracted much attentions, but facing obstacles of low redox ability and high recombination rate of photogenerated carriers. Herein, we have successfully synthesized Bi2SeO5/rGO/MIL-88A composition for the synergistic photocatalytic removal of chloramph...

Oxygen evolution reaction (OER) plays a determining role in electrochemical energy conversion devices, but challenges remain due to the lack of effective low-cost electrocatalysts and insufficient understanding about sluggish reaction kinetics. Distinguish from complex nano-structuring, this work focuses on the spin-related charge transfer and orbi...

The high level of norfloxacin (NOR) in aquatic environment causes bacterial drug resistance and perilous effects on human and aquatic life because of the greater toxicity and the oxidation-refractory property. Herein, we propose a series of porous metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) via a developed solvothermal process to accelerate NOR degradation, in...

Exploring photocatalysts to accelerate heavy metal Cr(VI) photoreduction is of great significance. Different from traditional strategies, this work proposes a simple and feasible strategy to construct cadmium/rhenium sulfide (CdS/ReS2) S-scheme heterojunctions for enhancing carrier separation through a covalent-anion-driven self-assembling approach...

Black phosphorus (BP) is one of the most promising visible-near-infrared light-driven photocatalysts with favorite photoelectric properties and unique tunable direct band gap. Nevertheless, the further development of BP is hindered by the fast carrier recombination rate and high Gibbs free energy. Herein, an innovative strategy is developed for the...

Electrocatalysis from N2 to NH3 has been increasingly studied because it provides an environmentally friendly avenue to take the place of the current Haber-Bosch method. Unfortunately, the conversion of N2 to NH3 is far below the necessary level for implementation at a large scale. Inspired by signal memory in a spiking neural network, we developed...

Extraction or injection of charges through the interface in hybrid catalysts is a fascinating strategy for steering charge carrier transfer in solar energy conversion applications. Instead of interfacial charges regulation, we adopt intrinsic spontaneous polarization-modulated internal electric field to drive photo-generated carriers separation and...

The photocatalytic reduction of N2 to NH3 under mild conditions using low-cost solar is an attractive alternative to replace the energy-intensive Haber-Bosch process, but which is typically hampered by poor binding of N2 to catalysts and high activation energy of intermediates. In particular time window, catalyst hydrogenation directly induced by p...

The future of sustainable fertilizers and carbon-free energy carrier demands innovative breakthroughs in the exploitation of efficient electrocatalysts for synthesizing ammonia (NH3) from nitrogen (N2) in mild conditions. Understanding and regulating the reaction intermediates that form on the catalyst surface through careful catalyst design could...

Here, we construct a three-dimensional artificial nanoforest consisting of p-type narrow-band-gap CuO nanowires as tree trunks and polar facet regulatory n-type wide-band-gap ZnO nanodisks (NDs) as tree leaves through a two-step hydrothermal process on Cu mesh. Such heterostructure device performs a synergistic-effect enhanced photocatalytic activi...

The intrinsically weak photomagnetic interaction makes it difficult to realize effectively light‐controlled magnetic structure transformation. Here unprecedented light‐induced switching of magnetism is reported in porphyrin functionalized ultrathin FeS nanosheets. Contrary to the antiferromagnetic (AFM) bulk, the troilite FeS nanosheets demonstrate...

The future of sustainable energy supply demands innovative breakthroughs in the design of cheap and durable catalysts for efficient electrochemical water splitting. Distinct from the conventional doping, defecting, and nanostructuring strategy, we develop a simple and feasible electric-strain way to trigger electrocatalyst’s structural phase transi...

For the first time, 3D networked Co x Ni 3‐x S 2 nanosheets were facilely grown on Ni foam via two‐step hydrothermal method forming a composite electrode (Co x Ni 3‐x S 2 /NF) for electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) under alkaline condition. With x value being 1.4, the as‐prepared Co 1.4 Ni 1.6 S 2 /NF shows superior performance as a...

Phase transition through local strain engineering is an exciting yet complex phenomenon in nanoscience for enhancing electronic, magnetic, and catalytic properties of nanomaterials. Here we report a topotactic transformation in 2H-WS2 nanobelts into 1T-WS2 nanohelices, which is mediated via an aqueous electrochemical activation method. The resultin...

Structural modulation of catalytic nanostructures and fundamental understanding of their active sites at the atomic scale are important for predicting and improving the catalytic properties of nanostructures. Here, we prepared quasi-one-dimensional (1D) metal molybdenum (Mo) chains confined in atom-thick molybdenum disulfide (MoS 2 ), referred henc...

The exploitation of the stable and earth-abundant electrocatalyst with high catalytic activity remains a significant challenge for hydrogen evolution reaction. Being different from complex nanostructuring, this work focuses on a simple and feasible way to improve hydrogen evolution reaction performance via manipulation of intrinsic physical propert...

Recently, the atom intercalation method has been developed and applied to two-dimensional (2D) materials to regulate their pristine physical properties. However, as it is an important factor in the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), the influence of alkali-metal-intercalated technology upon the electronic structure and catalytic activity of 2D mate...

Zero-dimensional graphitic carbon nitride nanoparticles (0D g-C3N4 NPs) possess the advantages of non-toxicity, metal-free, and rich surface catalytic active sites. However, the complex preparation process, wide bandgap structure, easily particle aggregation and rapid carriers’ recombination still limit their development in photocatalysis. Herein,...

Although 2D black phosphorous (BP) shows excellent optical and electronic properties, there are few reports on the photoluminescence (PL) properties of BP nanostructures because of the low yield of mechanical exfoliation, instability in water, and relatively weak emission. Herein, liquid exfoliation is combined with surface passivation to produce f...

Recently, the layered two-dimensional titania (2D-TiO2) with a reduced band gap has been successfully synthesized. However, as important application in spintronics, the ferromangnetism in this material has not been investigated so far. To obtain expected ferromagnetism, the formation and stability of the most prominent oxygen defects in monolayer T...

Hydrogen production by water splitting with electrochemical/photoelectrochemical techniques relies mainly on fresh water which only represents 7% of the total water resource in the world. The difficulty with performing seawater splitting arises from the complex seawater composition and environment, but from the viewpoint of better utilization of na...

Combining photoharvesting semiconductors with MoS2 co-catalysts is an intriguing approach to develop inexpensive and efficient photocatalysts for visible-light-driven hydrogen (H2) evolution; however, how to coordinate light absorbers and catalytic sites still remains a great challenge. Here, we propose a facile strategy for optimizing assembly of Cd...

Photocatalytic hydrogen evolution from water has triggered an intensive search for metal-free semiconducting photocatalysts. However, traditional semiconducting materials suffer from limited hydrogen evolution efficiency owing to low intrinsic electron transfer, rapid recombination of photogenerated carriers, and lack of artificial microstructure....

In photoelectrochemical (PEC) cells, it is a crucial issue to steer the charge flow in the electrode, including the internal movement of charge in the catalyst and the charge transfer across the catalyst-substrate interface toward the external circuit. Here, we fabricated vertically aligned MoS2 nanosheets (NSs) on carbon fiber cloth (CFC) substrat...

Two-dimensional (2D) materials, especially the inorganic 2D nanosheets (NSs), are of particular interest due to their unique structural and electronic properties, which are favorable for photoelectronic applications such as photocatalysis. Here, we design and fabricate the ultrathin 2D ZnO NSs decorated with Au nanoparticles (AuNPs), though molecul...

Developing ingenious heterostructure photoelectrodes in photoelectrochemical (PEC) cells to both harvest more solar photons and steer desired charge separation flow is a prerequisite challenge for PEC water splitting. Herein a hierarchical p-Si/n-ZnO@Au heterostructure was constructed via large-area growth of one-dimensional (1D) ZnO nanorod arrays...

Well-steered transport of photo-generated carriers in optoelectronic systems underlies many emerging solar conversion technologies, yet assessing the charge transition route in nanomaterials remains a challenge. Herein we combine the photo-induced absorption, emission and excitation properties in high luminescent carbon quantum dots (CQDs) with ami...

The construction of photonic nanosystems with highly accessible photon harvesting and charge collection attracts intense interest in the fields of photovoltaic and photoelectrochemical (PEC) cells. It is desirable to build three-dimensional (3D) porous photoelectrodes that ensure high active surface area and promote light-trapping, charge separatio...

We report the ZnO quantum dots (QDs) dispersed in hole scavenger (HS) matrix containing S2- and SO32- groups as a high-performance photocatalyst for H2 generation. The as-synthesized ZnO QDs were hybridized orderly with HS groups via water dissolving ethanol dynamic process, forming a stable ZnO QDs/HS hybrid hydrosol. Such a composite performs a r...

Multi-component hetero-nanostructures exhibit multifunctional properties or synergistic performance, and are thus considered as attractive materials for energy conversion applications. There is a long-standing demand to construct more sophisticated heterostructures for steering charge-carrier flow in semiconductor systems. Herein we fabricate a lar...

Reduced graphene oxide (rGO) nanosheets (NSs) decorated with TiO2 nanoparticles (NPs) were bound to activated carbon fibers (ACF) forming three-dimensional (3D) macroscopic composites with nanoscale building blocks by a one-pot hydrothermal self-assembly method. The integration of adsorption capacity enhanced by rGO NSs and photocatalytic activity...

The regulated loading of Fe3O4 nanoparticles (NPs) into graphene nanosheets (NSs) matrix along with the process of reducing graphene oxide (GO) has been achieved via a facile hydrothermally self–assembling strategy. The optimized graphene/Fe3O4 (GF) composite with the dispersedly embedded hybridization yields high surface area serving as active ads...

Vertically aligned nanosheet heterostructures with partly reduced MoO3 cores and adjustable MoS2 shells were fabricated via two-step chemical vapor deposition (CVD). The as-synthesized MoS2/MoOx heterostructures exhibit enhanced visible-light photocatalytic activity and good compatibility in a wide range of PH values (e.g. 2–12) for the degradation...

The visible-light-driven photocatalytic activities of graphene-semiconductor catalysts have recently been demonstrated, however, the transfer pathway of photogenerated carriers especially where the role of graphene still remains controversial. Here we report graphene–SnO2 aerosol nanocomposites that exhibit more superior dye adsorption capacity and...

The visible-light-driven photocatalytic activities of graphene-semiconductor catalysts have recently been demonstrated, however, the transfer pathway of photogenerated carriers especially where the role of graphene still remains controversial. Here we report graphene-SnO2 aerosol nanocomposites that exhibit more superior dye adsorption capacity and...