Wei Cui

Water electrolysis is considered as the most promising technology for hydrogen production. Much research has been devoted to developing efficient electrocatalysts for hydrogen production via the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen production via the oxygen evolution reaction (OER). The optimum electrocatalysts can drive down the energy costs needed for water splitting via lowering the overpotential. A number of cobalt (Co)-based materials have been developed over past years as non-noble-metal heterogeneous electrocatalysts for HER and OER. Recent progress in this field is summarized here, especially highlighting several important bifunctional catalysts. Various approaches to improve or optimize the electrocatalysts are introduced. Finally, the current existing challenges and the future working directions for enhancing the performance of Co-implicated electrocatalysts are proposed.

The development of effective and inexpensive hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) electrocatalysts for future renewable energy systems is highly desired. The strongly acidic conditions in proton exchange membranes create a need for acid-stable HER catalysts. A nanohybrid that consists of carbon nanotubes decorated with CoP nanocrystals (CoP/CNT) was prepared by the low-temperature phosphidation of a Co3O4/CNT precursor. As a novel non-noble-metal HER catalyst operating in acidic electrolytes, the nanohybrid exhibits an onset overpotential of as low as 40 mV, a Tafel slope of 54 mV dec(-1), an exchange current density of 0.13 mA cm(-2), and a Faradaic efficiency of nearly 100 %. This catalyst maintains its catalytic activity for at least 18 hours and only requires overpotentials of 70 and 122 mV to attain current densities of 2 and 10 mA cm(-2), respectively.

Graphene oxide (GO) is employed as a hole conductor in inverted planar heterojunction perovskite solar cells, and the devices with CH₃NH₃PbI₃-xClx as absorber achieve an efficiency of over 12%. The perovskite film grown on GO exhibits enhanced crystallization, high surface coverage ratio as well as preferred in-plane orientation of the (110) plane. Efficient hole extraction from the perovskite to GO is demonstrated.

Single- or few-layered transitional metal dichalcogenides, as a new genus of two-dimensional nanomaterials, have attracted tremendous attention in recent years, owing to their various intriguing properties. In this study, chemically exfoliated MoS2 nanosheets are modified with lipoic acid-terminated polyethylene glycol (LA-PEG), obtaining PEGylated MoS2 (MoS2-PEG) with high stability in physiological solutions and no obvious toxicity. Taking advantage of its ultra-high surface area, the obtained MoS2-PEG is able to load a photodynamic agent, chlorin e6 (Ce6), by physical adsorption. In vitro experiments reveal that Ce6 after being loaded on MoS2-PEG shows remarkably increased cellular uptake and thus significantly enhanced photodynamic therapeutic efficiency. Utilizing the strong, near-infrared (NIR) absorbance of the MoS2 nanosheets, we further demonstrate photothermally enhanced photodynamic therapy using Ce6-loaded MoS2-PEG for synergistic cancer killing, in both in vitro cellular and in vivo animal experiments. Our study presents a new type of multifunctional nanocarrier for the delivery of photodynamic therapy, which, if combined with photothermal therapy, appears to be an effective therapeutic approach for cancer treatment.

A self-powered ultraviolet photodetector with an extremely high responsivity (54.43 mA W⁻¹) was fabricated by constructing p–n junction of GaN/Ga₂O₃ films.