Flower-like hierarchical nanostructures with Cu3BiS3 nanosheets as building blocks formed by in situ corrosion of matrix Cu3BiS3 microspheres were synthesized via a facile hydrothermal method. Their morphology, microstructure, and crystalline phase were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD), respectively. Pore-size distribution analysis indicated that both mesopores and micropores existed in the as-obtained product, which are favourable for increasing the surface-to-volume ratio. The optical band gap of the hierarchical Cu3BiS3 nanostructures was estimated to be ∼1.2 eV by UV-vis spectroscopy. Electrochemical measurements were also used to investigate the electrochemical Li+ intercalation performance for the flower-like Cu3BiS3 nanostructures. The results showed that the initial discharge capacity of the nanosheet based Cu3BiS3 hierarchical structures is 676 mA h g−1 which is larger than the theoretical value of Bi2S3 (625 mA h g−1), but it degraded quickly during subsequent cycles, and further improvement in cyclic stability is still needed for practical application in lithium-ion batteries.

TiO2 nanostructures have been fabricated by direct annealing of the Ti foil with Pd catalyst. The Pd catalysts play an important role in reducing sintering temperature for the synthesis of TiO2 nanostructures. The morphologies can be varied between the nanowires (NWs) and nanobelts (NBs) by adjusting the amount of Pd and annealing temperature. It shows that the vapor liquid solid and vapor solid may be the most suitable mechanism for the TiO2 nanostructure growth. Experimental results suggest that this method is an effective, simple and inexpensive route for the preparation of TiO2 nanostructures with high quality and high yield.

TiO2 nanowires prepared by thermal annealing of anodized Ti foil were sensitized with CdS quantum dots (QDs) via chemical bath deposition (CBD). Microstructural characterizations by SEM, TEM and XRD show that the CdS nanocrystals with the cubic structure have intimate contact to the TiO2 nanowires. The amount of CdS QDs can be controlled by varying the CBD cycles. The experiment results demonstrate that the surface photovoltage (SPV) response intensity was significantly enhanced and the surface photovoltage response region was also expanded obviously for the TiO2 NWs sensitized by CdS QDs.