Facile Surfactant-, Reductant-, and Ag Salt-free Growth of Ag Nanoparticles with Controllable Size from 35 to 660 nm on Bulk Ag Materials.

Morphologically and dimensionally controlled growth of Ag nanocrystals has long been plagued by surfactants or capping agents that complicate downstream applications, unstable Ag salts that impaired the reproducibility, and multistep seed injection that is troublesome and time-consuming. Here, we report a one-pot electro-chemical method to fast (∼2 min) produce Ag nanoparticles from commercial bulk Ag materials in a nitric acid solution, eliminating any need for surfactants or capping agents. Their size can be easily manipulated in an unprecedentedly wide range from 35 to 660 nm.

In situ tensile fracturing of multilayer graphene nanosheets for their in-plane mechanical properties.

The excellent mechanical properties of single- and few-layer graphene have been well-quantified and evidenced by computational methods and local indentation measurements. However, there are less experimental reports on the in-plane mechanical properties of multilayer graphene sheets, despite many practical applications in flexible electronic and energy devices (e.g.

Large-scale synthesis of carbon dots/TiO nanocomposites for the photocatalytic color switching system.

In view of the easy control and contactless spatial nature of light, the photoreversible color switching system has attracted tremendous attention. Although some progress has been achieved in the past few years, the practical applications have been limited by the complicated preparation process, material toxicity and low reaction yield. Herein, we report a rapid, a one-pot large-scale synthesis approach for the preparation of carbon dots (CDs)/TiO nanocomposites the thermal condensation at 160 °C, affording high photocatalytic color switching on/off performance.

Multicolor Tuning and Temperature-Triggered Anomalous Eu-Related Photoemission Enhancement via Interplay of Accelerated Energy Transfer and Release of Defect-Trapped Electrons in the Tb,Eu-Doped Strontium-Aluminum Chlorites.

So far, a large number of rare earth (RE) and non-RE-doped emission-tunable crystals based on controllable energy transfer have become available, but numerous mechanistic issues, particularly for those that involve temperature-dependent energy transfer between the well-shielded 4f RE ions, lack comprehensive theoretical and experimental investigation, limiting greatly their development and applications in the future. Here, we design and report a type of Tb,Eu-doped SrAlOCl phosphors capable of multiemissions upon excitation at 376 nm, through using the orthorhombic SrAlOCl as the host lattice while the well-shielded 4f Tb and Eu ions as dual luminescent centers. Our results reveal that the energy transfer from Tb to Eu ions, happening via an electric dipole-quadrupole (d-q) interaction, can be controlled by the doping ratio of Tb and Eu, leading to the tunable emissions from green (0.