‘One-pot’ engineering of 0D carbon-based inorganic nanoarchitectonics for boosting multitasking catalytic activity

Easy-to-make nanostructured materials that exhibit multitasking activity —while reducing the use of hazardous solvents throughout its architectural design— is a must to advance in the so-called Industry 4.0. Herein, a simple and eco-friendly ‘one-pot’ functionalization approach has been devised for synthesizing 0D carbon-based inorganic nanoarchitectonics made of carbon dots (CDs, as core carbon source) carrying two different inorganic building blocks, viz. quantum dots (CdSe@ZnS–QDs) and metal nanoparticles (Pt–NPs). As a proof-of-principle, the multi-catalytic activity of the resulting 0D Pt/QD/CD nanoarchitectonics by means of photoelectrocatalysis and sonocatalysis has been considered and compared with the pristine CD counterpart, demonstrating its suitability for boosting pivotal catalytic tasks like i) the photoelectrogeneration of hydrogen via hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), and ii) the sonodegradation of environmental pollutants (i.e., Rhodamine B) in water. Overall, this chemical approach is general and might be tailored for architecting alternative carbon-based heterostructures to enhance alternative multi-catalytic tasks.