An unusual zinc substrate-induced self-construction route to various hierarchical architectures of hydrated tungsten oxide.

A novel active zinc substrate-induced sequential self-construction method is presented for the fabrication of hydrated WO(3) hierarchical octahedrons, flakes, lanterns, and arresting sandwiched double-layer nanorods arrays architectures for the first time. Photocatalytic activity and gas sensing properties of the as-obtained various WO(3).0.33H(2)O architectures were studied as well.