Retracted Article: Recent advances of metal–metal oxide nanocomposites and their tailored nanostructures in numerous catalytic applications

Abstract

The skilful synthesis of nanohybrids composed of noble metals (Au, Ag, Pt and Pd, as well as AuAg alloy) and metal oxides (ZnO, TiO₂, Cu₂O, MnO₂, Fe₂O₃, WO₃ and CeO₂) has received considerable attention for applications in photocatalysis, solar cells, drug delivery, surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy and many other important areas. The overall architecture of nanocomposites is one of the most important factors dictating the physical properties of nanohybrids. Noble metals can be coupled to metal oxides and metal chalcogenides to yield diverse nanostructures, including noble metal decorated-metal oxide nanoparticles (NPs), nanoarrays, noble metal/metal oxide core/shell, noble metal/metal oxide yolk/shell and Janus noble metal–metal oxide nanostructures. In this review, we focus on the significant application based advances in neat and tailored nanostructures of noble metal–metal oxide nanohybrids and touched upon chalcogenides also. The improvement in performance in representative energy conversion, electrochemical water splitting, photocatalytic hydrogen generation, photocatalytic CO₂ reduction, photocatalytic degradation of organic pollutants and dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSCs) applications is discussed. Finally, we conclude with a perspective on the future direction and prospects of these controllable nanohybrid materials.