Fabricating a hollow cuboctahedral structure for N-doped carbon coated p-n heterojunctions towards high-performance photocatalytic organic transformation

The application of semiconductors-based photocatalysts in organic transformation has been limited by the low light utilization efficiency and the rapid recombination of photo-induced charge carriers. In this paper, we have successfully fabricated a hollow cuboctahedral nanostructure (CNNCH), which is composed of N-doped carbon layer and CuO/NiO p-n heterojunctions. The hollow structure in CNNCH can effectively favor the light utilization through the multiple light reflection and scattering. The separation of photo-induced charge carriers can be highly improved by the exitence of charge transfer pathways between the p-n heterojunctions and semiconductor/N-doped carbon layer interfaces. Due to the above advantages, hollow cuboctahedral CNNCH as the photocatalyst has behaved high performance towards the photocatalytic cross-dehydrogenative coupling reaction.