Epitaxial growth of highly symmetrical branched noble metal-semiconductor heterostructures with efficient plasmon-induced hot-electron transfer

Li Zhai; Sara T Gebre; Bo Chen; Dan Xu; Junze Chen; Zijian Li; Yawei Liu; Hua Yang; Chongyi Ling; Yiyao Ge; Wei Zhai; Changsheng Chen; Lu Ma; Qinghua Zhang; Xuefei Li; Yujie Yan; Xinyu Huang; Lujiang Li; Zhiqiang Guan; Chen-Lei Tao; Zhiqi Huang; Hongyi Wang; Jinze Liang; Ye Zhu; Chun-Sing Lee; Peng Wang; Chunfeng Zhang; Lin Gu; Yonghua Du; Tianquan Lian; Hua Zhang; Xue-Jun Wu

doi:10.1038/s41467-023-38237-7

Epitaxial growth of highly symmetrical branched noble metal-semiconductor heterostructures with efficient plasmon-induced hot-electron transfer

Nat Commun. 2023 May 3;14(1):2538. doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-38237-7.

Authors

Li Zhai^#^{1

2

3}, Sara T Gebre^#⁴, Bo Chen^#², Dan Xu^#¹, Junze Chen⁵, Zijian Li², Yawei Liu⁴, Hua Yang², Chongyi Ling², Yiyao Ge², Wei Zhai², Changsheng Chen⁶, Lu Ma⁷, Qinghua Zhang⁸, Xuefei Li¹, Yujie Yan⁹, Xinyu Huang¹⁰, Lujiang Li², Zhiqiang Guan², Chen-Lei Tao¹, Zhiqi Huang², Hongyi Wang², Jinze Liang², Ye Zhu⁶, Chun-Sing Lee², Peng Wang^{9

11}, Chunfeng Zhang¹⁰, Lin Gu¹², Yonghua Du⁷, Tianquan Lian¹³, Hua Zhang^{14

15

16}, Xue-Jun Wu¹⁷

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Coordination Chemistry, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210023, China.
² Department of Chemistry, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
³ Hong Kong Branch of National Precious Metals Material Engineering Research Center (NPMM), City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
⁴ Department of Chemistry, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, 30322, USA.
⁵ College of Materials Science and Engineering, Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan, 610065, China.
⁶ Department of Applied Physics, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Hong Kong.
⁷ National Synchrotron Light Source II, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY, 11973, USA.
⁸ Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China.
⁹ National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Artificial Functional Materials, College of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210093, China.
¹⁰ National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, School of Physics, and Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210093, China.
¹¹ Department of Physics, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, UK.
¹² Beijing National Center for Electron Microscopy and Laboratory of Advanced Materials, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China.
¹³ Department of Chemistry, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, 30322, USA. tlian@emory.edu.
¹⁴ Department of Chemistry, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China. hua.zhang@cityu.edu.hk.
¹⁵ Hong Kong Branch of National Precious Metals Material Engineering Research Center (NPMM), City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China. hua.zhang@cityu.edu.hk.
¹⁶ Shenzhen Research Institute, City University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, 518057, China. hua.zhang@cityu.edu.hk.
¹⁷ State Key Laboratory of Coordination Chemistry, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210023, China. xjwu@nju.edu.cn.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Epitaxial growth is one of the most commonly used strategies to precisely tailor heterostructures with well-defined compositions, morphologies, crystal phases, and interfaces for various applications. However, as epitaxial growth requires a small interfacial lattice mismatch between the components, it remains a challenge for the epitaxial synthesis of heterostructures constructed by materials with large lattice mismatch and/or different chemical bonding, especially the noble metal-semiconductor heterostructures. Here, we develop a noble metal-seeded epitaxial growth strategy to prepare highly symmetrical noble metal-semiconductor branched heterostructures with desired spatial configurations, i.e., twenty CdS (or CdSe) nanorods epitaxially grown on twenty exposed (111) facets of Ag icosahedral nanocrystal, albeit a large lattice mismatch (more than 40%). Importantly, a high quantum yield (QY) of plasmon-induced hot-electron transferred from Ag to CdS was observed in epitaxial Ag-CdS icosapods (18.1%). This work demonstrates that epitaxial growth can be achieved in heterostructures composed of materials with large lattice mismatches. The constructed epitaxial noble metal-semiconductor interfaces could be an ideal platform for investigating the role of interfaces in various physicochemical processes.