Fig. 1: Morphological, structural characterizations of sheet-like CuO catalysts synthesized in this study by ex situ techniques.

a Large-scale scanning electron microscopy (SEM) image and 3D structure of CuO NS (insert, orange). b Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) image and c high resolution TEM (HR-TEM) images with measured lattice distance and the corresponding fast Fourier transformation. d Selected area electron diffraction (SAED) pattern along zone axis [001]. e 2D Synchrotron grazing incidence wide-angle X-ray scattering (GI-WAXS) image demonstrating preferred orientation of as-prepared CuO NS on glassy carbon. Additional azimuthally integrated line profiles are shown in Supplementary Fig. S5b.