Bimetallic Janus structures are of great importance as their fantastic properties arise from the physical separation and the synergistic effects of the composed materials. Currently, the effective control of the Janus structure still remains a challenge compared to that of the conventional core−shell configuration and thus is highly desired. In this work, strong thiol ligands were used for tuning the interfacial energy between the Au seeds and the Cu deposit to induce the transformation of the Au−Cu core−shell to the asymmetric Janus structures. As a result of effective ligand control, a series of Au−Cu Janus structures using Au nanospheres, Au nanorods, and triangular Au nanoplates as seeds were successfully obtained. Most importantly, the Janus degree of the Au−Cu Janus structures can be readily tuned by varying the molecular structure and the amount of thiol ligands. We believe that the effective strong ligand-mediated interfacial energy control achieved in the Au−Cu system could tune bimetallic Janus structures with different metal−metal combinations, which would help in the precise control of bimetallic nanostructures. In addition, further exploration of the strong ligand control in multicomponent systems may open new doors toward the design and synthesis of sophisticated functional nanomaterials with promising properties.
Precise structural control has attracted tremendous interest in pursuit of the tailoring of physical properties. Here, this work shows that through strong ligand‐mediated interfacial energy control, Au‐Cu2O dumbbell structures where both the Au nanorod (AuNR) and the partially encapsulating Cu2O domains are highly crystalline. The synthetic advance allows physical separation of the Au and Cu2O domains, in addition to the use of long nanorods with tunable absorption wavelength, and the crystalline Cu2O domain with well‐defined facets. The interplay of plasmon and Schottky effects boosts the photocatalytic performance in the model photodegradation of methyl orange, showing superior catalytic efficiency than the AuNR@Cu2O core–shell structures. In addition, compared to the typical core–shell structures, the AuNR‐Cu2O dumbbells can effectively electrochemically catalyze the CO2 to C2+ products (ethanol and ethylene) via a cascade reaction pathway. The excellent dual function of both photo‐ and electrocatalysis can be attributed to the fine physical separation of the crystalline Au and Cu2O domains.
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