Hierarchical Hollow Zinc Oxide Nanocomposites Derived from Morphology-Tunable Coordination Polymers for Enhanced Solar Hydrogen Production.

Infinite coordination-polymer particles (CPPs) are promising materials for solar energy conversion with high efficiency. However, the range of organic ligands that may be used to create CPPs is limited, as are strategies for modification, thereby hindering the applications of such material. In this paper, competitive evolution-morphological and structural change from Zn-based crystallites to amorphous particles is described. Controlled contribution of organic linkers selectively derived six Zn-CPPs with multivariate characters. Based on the diversity of these substructures, hollow zinc oxide particles were initially formed by self-pyrolysis of CPPs and effectively modified by ultrathin doped nanosheets. The obtained double-sided heterojunctions offer fully-covered active sites, bringing together efficient light-excited charge-transfer nanochannels, which exhibit an excellent solar H 2 -releasing activity (e.g., 4512.5 μmol h -1  g -1 ) and stable cyclability.