Surface-state-mediated interfacial charge dynamics between carbon dots and ZnO toward highly promoting photocatalytic...

Design of hybrid systems for photocatalytic application tends to be restricted by lacking interfacial coupling and fast charge recombination in the body competing with interface dynamics. In this work, the reduced carbon dots (rCDs) with numerous surface hydroxyl groups were deliberately anchored onto flower-like ZnO spheres with a highly exposed surface area to form heterointerfaces with sufficient interfacial electronic coupling. The incorporated rCDs evidently promote the light harvesting and charge separation of the binary hybrid system, resulting in highly enhanced photocatalytic Cr(VI) degradation performance. Ultrafast time-resolved spectra reveal that the surface C-OH bonds of rCDs play a crucial role at the heterointerfaces to regulate the charge dynamics. The long-lived surface C-OH states not only act as electron donors but also become electron mediators to rapidly capture the photoelectrons from the intrinsic state in the time-domain of 1 ps and induce a much longer lifetime for achieving highly efficient photoelectron injection from rCDs to ZnO. These results manifest that rCDs can be a promising photosensitizer to apply in photocatalytic pollutant treatment and energy conversion fields.