In this work, p-Co3O4/n-ZnO heterostructures were fabricated on Ni substrate by hydrothermal-decomposition method using cobaltous nitrate hexahydrate (Co(NO3)2·6H2O) and zinc acetate dihydrate (Zn(CH3COO)2·2H2O) as precursors with zinc acetate concentration varying from 5.0 to 55.0 mM. Structure and morphology of the developed samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman spectroscopy, and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Effect of zinc acetate concentration on the photocatalytic activity of p-Co3O4/n-ZnO heterostructures was investigated by degradation of methyl orange (MO) under the UV light irradiation. The fabricated p-Co3O4/n-ZnO heterostructures exhibited higher photocatalytic activity than pure Co3O4 particles. In order to obtain the maximum photocatalytic activity, zinc acetate concentration was optimized. Specifically, at 35 mM of zinc acetate, the p-Co3O4/n-ZnO showed the highest photocatalytic activity with the degradation efficiency of MO reaching 89.38% after 72 h irradiation. The improvement of photocatalytic performance of p-Co3O4/n-ZnO heterostructures is due to the increased concentration of photo-generated holes on Co3O4 surface and the higher surface-to-volume ratio in the hierarchical structure formed by nano-lamellas.Graphical abstract Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s11671-018-2604-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Currently, education is faced with serious challenges and rare development opportunities. The education workers of ideological and political institutions in colleges and universities need to actively explore the new path of ideological and political education in the new situation. All of us have made great progress in all the undertakings of socialism with Chinese characteristics in our endeavor to realize the "Chinese dream". The ideological and political education of college students has not achieved its due effect, and there are some problems such as vague political thought, pluralistic values and deviation of moral evaluation. 137This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).