An effective strategy to overcome the morphology evolution of hematite nanorods under high-temperature activation is presented, via tuning the crystallinity and sintering temperature by substrate modification. It is demonstrated that the as-prepared doping-free hematite nanorods with fine nanostructures obtain a significantly higher photocurrent density of 2.12 mA cm-2 at 1.23 V versus RHE, due to effective charge separation and transfer.
Keywords: antimony‐doped tin oxide nanoparticles; conductive substrate modification; crystallinity engineering; hematite nanorod; photoelectrochemical.