Recent advances in metal halide perovskite based photocatalysts for artificial photosynthesis and organic transformations.

Metal halide perovskites (MHP) emerged as highly promising materials for photocatalysis, offering significant advancements in the degradation of soluble and airborne pollutants, as well as the transformation of functional organic compounds. This comprehensive review focuses on recent developments in MHP-based photocatalysts, specifically examining two major categories: lead-based (such as CsPbBr) and lead-free variants ( CsAgBiX, CsBiBr and others). While the review briefly discusses the contributions of MHPs to hydrogen (H) production and carbon dioxide (CO) reduction, the main emphasis is on the design principles that determine the effectiveness of perovskites in facilitating organic reactions and degrading hazardous chemicals through oxidative transformations.

PtPdCuGa Intermetallic Nanocatalysts with Enhanced Methanol Oxidation Performance for Efficient Hybrid Seawater Electrolysis.

Seawater electrolysis is a potentially cost-effective approach to green hydrogen production, but it currently faces substantial challenges for its high energy consumption and the interference of chlorine evolution reaction (ClER). Replacing the energy-demanding oxygen evolution reaction with methanol oxidation reaction (MOR) represents a promising alternative, as MOR occurs at a significantly low anodic potential, which cannot only reduce the voltage needed for electrolysis but also completely circumvents ClER. To this end, developing high-performance MOR catalysts is a key.

Enhanced CO Functionality on Carbon Papers Ensures Lowering Nucleation Delay of ALD for Ru towards Unprecedented Alkaline HER Activity.

The success in lowering the nucleation delay for Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) of Ru on carbon surfaces is mitigated by constructive pretreatments resulting enhancement of CO functionality. Treatment of the carbon papers (CP) allowed Ru species deposition for minimum number of ALD cycles (25 cycles) with good conformality. The development of electrocatalysts from single atoms to nanoparticles (NPs) on conductive supports with low metal loadings, thus improving performance, is essential in electrocatalysis.

Gigahertz-Based Visible Light Detection Enabled via CdS-Coated TiO Nanotube Layers.

Detection of visible light is a key component in material characterization techniques and often a key component of quality or purity control analyses for health and safety applications. Here in this work, to enable visible light detection at gigahertz frequencies, a planar microwave resonator is integrated with high aspect ratio TiO nanotube (TNT) layer-sensitized CdS coating using the atomic layer deposition (ALD) technique. This unique method of visible light detection with microwave-based sensing improves integration of the light detection devices with digital technology.

2D FeS Nanosheets by Atomic Layer Deposition: Electrocatalytic Properties for the Hydrogen Evolution Reaction.

2-dimensional FeS nanosheets of different sizes are synthesized by applying different numbers of atomic layer deposition (ALD) cycles on TiO nanotube layers and graphite sheets as supporting materials and used as an electrocatalyst for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). The electrochemical results confirm electrocatalytic activity in alkaline media with outstanding long-term stability (>65 h) and enhanced catalytic activity, reflected by a notable drop in the initial HER overpotential value (up to 26 %). By using a range of characterization techniques, the origin of the enhanced catalytic activity was found to be caused by the synergistic interplay between in situ morphological and compositional changes in the 2D FeS nanosheets during HER.

Strategies for Semiconductor/Electrocatalyst Coupling toward Solar-Driven Water Splitting.

Hydrogen (H) has a significant potential to enable the global energy transition from the current fossil-dominant system to a clean, sustainable, and low-carbon energy system. While presently global H production is predominated by fossil-fuel feedstocks, for future widespread utilization it is of paramount importance to produce H in a decarbonized manner. To this end, photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting has been proposed to be a highly desirable approach with minimal negative impact on the environment.

Vapor-solid synthesis of monolithic single-crystalline CoP nanowire electrodes for efficient and robust water electrolysis.

Electrochemical water splitting into hydrogen and oxygen is a promising technology for sustainable energy storage. The development of earth-abundant transition metal phosphides (TMPs) to catalyze the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and TMP-derived oxy-hydroxides to catalyze the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) has recently drawn considerable attention. However, most monolithically integrated metal phosphide electrodes are prepared by laborious multi-step methods and their operational stability at high current densities has been rarely studied.

One-Step Fabrication of Monolithic Electrodes Comprising Co S Particles Supported on Cobalt Foam for Efficient and Durable Oxygen Evolution Reaction.

A very easy and cost-effective approach to the fabrication of monolithic Co S water oxidation electrodes (Co@Co S ), fabricated by one-step hydrothermal treatment of commercially available cobalt foam in the presence of thiourea, is reported. The morphology, crystal structure, microstructure, and composition of as-fabricated Co@Co S electrodes were examined by using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), powder X-ray diffractometry (XRD), transmission electron microscope (TEM), and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and their electrochemical properties were investigated by cyclic voltammetry (CV), chronopotentiometry (CP), chronoamperometry (CA), and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). When used to catalyze the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in alkaline solution, the Co@Co S electrode with an optimal Co S loading exhibits outstanding catalytic activity, requiring a low overpotential of 350 mV to deliver an anodic current density of 10 mA cm and showing fast kinetics for OER with a small Tafel slope (55 mV dec ) and charge-transfer resistance (0.

Chemically induced porosity on BiVO4 films produced by double magnetron sputtering to enhance the photo-electrochemical response.

Double magnetron sputtering (DMS) is an efficient system that is well known because of its precise control of the thin film synthesizing process over any kind of substrate. Here, DMS has been adopted to synthesize BiVO4 films over a conducting substrate (FTO), using metallic vanadium and ceramic Bi2O3 targets simultaneously. The films were characterized using different techniques, such as X-ray diffraction (XRD), UV-Vis spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) and profilometry.