Publication date: 17th July 2025
Zinc oxide (ZnO) has attracted considerable attention as a photoanode material for artificial photosynthesis owing to its advantageous optical characteristics, suitable band edge positions, and high electron mobility, all of which make it promising for driving water oxidation. Nevertheless, its actual efficiency falls far short of the theoretical limit because of poor chemical stability under oxidative environments and the fast recombination of photogenerated carriers. To address these drawbacks, various approaches such as nanostructuring, heteroatom incorporation, and interface modification have been pursued. In this study, we present ZnO nanorods coated with a precisely controlled ZnWO4 shell (ZnO@ZnWO4), fabricated through an optimized chemical vapor deposition (CVD) technique that allows fine tuning of the shell thickness. Photoelectrochemical (PEC) evaluations demonstrate that introducing an appropriately thin ZnWO4 layer markedly improves the activity relative to bare ZnO nanorods. Detailed characterization suggests that this enhancement originates from oxygen vacancies in the ZnWO4 shell, which promote interfacial charge transport and effectively suppress electron–hole recombination.
This work was financially supported by the “the Basic Research Program” (NRF-2021R1A2C2010244) through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT.
nanoGe is a prestigious brand of successful science conferences that are developed along the year in different areas of the world since 2009. Our worldwide conferences cover cutting-edge materials topics like perovskite solar cells, photovoltaics, optoelectronics, solar fuel conversion, surface science, catalysis and two-dimensional materials, among many others.
Previously nanoGe Spring Meeting (NSM) and nanoGe Fall Meeting (NFM), MATSUS is a multiple symposia conference focused on a broad set of topics of advanced materials preparation, their fundamental properties, and their applications, in fields such as renewable energy, photovoltaics, lighting, semiconductor quantum dots, 2-D materials synthesis, charge carriers dynamics, microscopy and spectroscopy semiconductors fundamentals, etc.
International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics
International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics (HOPV) is celebrated yearly in May. The main topics are the development, function and modeling of materials and devices for hybrid and organic solar cells. The field is now dominated by perovskite solar cells but also other hybrid technologies, as organic solar cells, quantum dot solar cells, and dye-sensitized solar cells and their integration into devices for photoelectrochemical solar fuel production.
Asia-Pacific International Conference on Perovskite, Organic Photovoltaics and Optoelectronics
The main topics of the Asia-Pacific International Conference on Perovskite, Organic Photovoltaics and Optoelectronics (IPEROP) are discussed every year in Asia-Pacific for gathering the recent advances in the fields of material preparation, modeling and fabrication of perovskite and hybrid and organic materials. Photovoltaic devices are analyzed from fundamental physics and materials properties to a broad set of applications. The conference also covers the developments of perovskite optoelectronics, including light-emitting diodes, lasers, optical devices, nanophotonics, nonlinear optical properties, colloidal nanostructures, photophysics and light-matter coupling.
The International Conference on Perovskite Thin Film Photovoltaics Perovskite Photonics and Optoelectronics (NIPHO) is the best place to hear the latest developments in perovskite solar cells as well as on recent advances in the fields of perovskite light-emitting diodes, lasers, optical devices, nanophotonics, nonlinear optical properties, colloidal nanostructures, photophysics and light-matter coupling.