Themed collection 2022 Journal of Materials Chemistry A Most Popular Articles

Perovskite nanocrystals embedded in metal–organic frameworks (PeMOF) are a new nanoscale heterostructure for stable photonic sources. This perspective discusses the properties of PeMOF structures and their current progress in photonic devices.

The versatility of MOFs is ideal for designing efficient CO2RR electrocatalysts, yet their poor stability and conductivity needs to be improved.

The rapid development of wearable devices has put forward high requirements for stable, solid-state, flexible and even stretchable energy storage systems.

The currently strategies for activating the TMDC basal planes toward hydrogen evolution reaction were summarized, which are divided into internal and external regulation, depending on whether the pristine structure is altered or not.

In this review, recent electrolyte design strategies and progress are given, along with the discussion of relative key features and properties, as well as the practical design and considerations.

Systematic survey on the fabrication and electrochemical performance of the most promising classes of pseudocapacitive/battery-type electrode materials for supercapacitors.

This review summarizes the adhesion mechanism and design strategies of underwater adhesion hydrogels, and generalizes their underwater application fields (adhesives, motion monitoring, marine environmental exploration and coatings).

This review comprehensively discusses the state-of-the-art of metal oxides/2D materials heterostructures as promising alternatives to harvest the renewable source of sunlight for improved photoelectrochemical water splitting performance.

This review presents the recent progress in organic solar cells based on non-fullerene acceptors, with a wide coverage from material synthesis and processing to interface engineering, device structure, large-area fabrication, and device stability.

MOF/COF-based hybrids show the properties of precisely tunable compositions and structures, and provide a broad range of potential applications in gas sorption and separation, catalysis, energy transfer, biomedicine, etc.

The first working lithium-ion battery containing polymer electrolytes derived from waste poly(ethylene terephthalate) beverage bottles is demonstrated.

A green route to prepare Zr-based MOF-808 with controlled crystal size have been developed. MOF-808 is able to decontaminate wastewater by simultaneously degrading a toxic pesticide and recovering phosphate ions.

Amorphous VSe_2−x nanosheets with abundant Se-vacancies (V_Se) showed dramatically enhanced NRR activity and selectivity, attributed to the amorphization-triggered Se-vacancies that promote the NRR and impeding the H₂ evolution.

Doping the Co element into the traditional La_0.5Sr_0.5MnO_3−δ cathode material triggers the activity of the cathode/electrolyte interface in the composite cathode, leading to impressively high cell performance for proton-conducting solid oxide fuel cells.

This study reports the synthesis and characterization of biobased CANs incorporating CF₃-activated aza-Michael bonds and ester groups showing remarkable reprocessing abilities and high activation energy.

Here, we present superhydrophobic, hierarchical, and nanostructured cryogels made from cellulose nanofibers (CNFs) and nanocrystals (CNCs), double cross-linked with MXene nanosheets and poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) in the presence of tetradecylamine.

For the first time, virgin and waste polyethylene (PE) was upcycled using exclusively free-radical methods into reprocessable, thermally stable, and creep-resistant PE covalent adaptable networks capable of dialkylamino disulfide dynamic chemistry.

Developing high-performance and low-cost donor/acceptor materials is crucial for the industrialization of organic solar cells (OSCs).

A novel water-stable 2D Copper-Imidazolate Framework (2DCIF) exhibits outstanding electrocatalytic activity for the oxygen reduction reaction without the need for calcination. These 2DCIFs have been successfully used as air electrodes in Zn–air batteries.

In this work, vanadium doped molybdenum disulfide (V–MoS₂) electrocatalysts are successfully prepared by using vanadium defect-engineering for electrochemical nitrate reduction reaction (NITRR), which has significantly improved NITRR activity.

We propose the general selection guidelines of amorphous cathode coatings for lithium-ion batteries based on an extensive high-throughput computational study and detailed ionic diffusion analysis.

Surface reduction leads to voltage decay in extended cycling of Li- and Mn-rich layered oxides (Li_1.2Ni_0.2Mn_0.6O₂).

We develop a route to synthesise Cu-functionalized porous BN (Cu/BN) directly from a metal–organic framework (MOF). The Cu/BN presents an improved CO₂ photoreduction performance compared to pristine BN and standard reference sample, g-C₃N₄.

A strategy for marine waste upcycling and CO₂ utilization by the recovery of high-value monomer from fishing net waste using seashell waste-derived catalysts in the presence of CO₂.

A crucial ingredient in lithium (Li) and sodium (Na)-ion batteries (LIBs and NIBs) is the electrolyte.

A scalable synthesis of magnesium ion imprinted nitrogen-doped carbon allows for facile preparation of large quantities of Fe–N–C, for large-scale fuel cell research.

Text-mining inspired study on halide double perovskite formation using in situ structural and optical probes.

We deconstruct the origins of the orders of magnitude difference in proton conductance between micron and centimeter-scale monolayer graphene membranes to help advance atomically thin proton exchange membranes for applications in energy conversion, storage and separation.

The Seebeck coefficient of Fe^2+/3+ thermogalvanic cells is inversely proportional to the donor number of organic solvent additives, which cause rearrangement of the Fe^2+/3+ solvent shell.

PEDOT:PSS was combined with OIPCs (C₂mpyrFSI and C₂mpyrTFSI) which gave high ionic and electronic conductivities and when employed for the first time in a solid-state Li|LiFePO₄ cell as an OMIEC binder it showed an outstanding performance.

Compared to polycrystalline Ni-rich cathode materials, single crystal Ni-rich LiNi_0.8Co_0.1Mn_0.1O₂ materials have less irreversible structural and phase changes under varied temperature conditions, improving their cycling stability.

We report a photoelectrochemical (PEC) approach for the selective oxidation of alcohols to value-added products with simultaneous hydrogen (H₂) generation using polymeric carbon nitride (CN) film as a photoanode.

Anion exchange membrane water electrolysis (AEMWE) is a potentially low-cost and sustainable technology for hydrogen production that combines the advantages of proton exchange membrane and traditional alkaline water electrolysis systems.

PCEs of 15.81% and 15.29% are achieved in LbL and BHJ all-PSCs with polymer donor PM6, polymer acceptor PY-IT and CN as an additive. Over 15% PCE improvement can be obtained in LbL and BHJ all-PSCs with CN in LbL and BHJ active layers.

We propose the controllable synthesis of N/Co-doped carbon from metal–organic frameworks, which shows high performance in the integrated solar vapor generation and photocatalytic degradation of organic pollutants.

Hindered urea bonds are introduced as self-healing units in a polymer electrolyte for Li-metal batteries. Differently from standard commercial separators, the poly(urea-urethane) system works for hundreds of cycles after several damage/healing steps.

3D printing and nickel coating greatly enhance the membrane permeability and selectivity for oil/water separation.

A solvent–precursor interaction-guided synthetic strategy is proposed to design heteroatomic carbon cathodes with customized microstructures towards efficient Zn-ion energy storage.

3d transition metal anchored B₅N₃ materials were analyzed as potential catalysts for electrochemical CO₂ reduction to methane.

An efficient strategy focusing on the key protonation process was confirmed to screen multifunctional electrocatalysts for the NORR, NO₂RR and NO₃RR.

A high-performance lead-free relaxor ferroelectric ceramic capacitor designed by a multiscale optimization strategy for energy storage applications.

An efficient and sustainable gas diffusible OER anode toward industrial alkaline water-splitting is fabricated by simply immersing Ni foam in ethanolic FeCl₃ etchant, which produces a microporous Ni backbone decorated with nanocatalysts.

A Schiff-base derived TPE dimer has been designed and synthesized, which could be further prepared as NPs in water with tunable emission and sensing ability controlled by an integration of fluorescence mechanisms including ESIPT, AIE, and FRET.

Due to the high conductivity of the anisotropic structure, the aerogel achieves excellent shielding properties. Meanwhile, the aerogel has high compressibility and excellent thermal stability, which greatly enriches the application scenarios of this shielding device.

Carbon-based transition metal (TM) single-atom catalysts (SACs) have shown great potential toward electrochemical water splitting and H₂ production.

A multi-stage machine learning and molecular dynamics simulation-assisted pipeline is introduced for the time- and cost-efficient design and screening of small molecule acceptors for organic solar cells.

Oxygen vacancy assisted stabilization of Ru@NiV-LDH was achieved via wet chemical methods. Ru@NiV-LDH showed an excellent water splitting activity. DFT analysis confirmed the stabilization Ru NPs over the LDH surface by 3.8 ± 0.5 eV adsorption energy.

The time-dependent evolution of a P3HT:nonfullerene blend was revealed during annealing. The optimal blend gives 10.7%, which breaks the 10% benchmark for P3HT-solar cells.

We present a facile method for the rational design of highly exfoliated two-dimensional Ti₃C₂T_x nanosheets (T_x = O, OH, and F) doped with Cu (Cu/Ti₃C₂T_x) for electrochemical CO₂ reduction to formic acid at low Cu content of ∼1 wt%.

In situ constructing hetero-interface, and revealing its interfacial polarization is challenging. Here, the Mo defect-induced interfacial polarization on MoC(−)/NC(+) interface was clarified, and for the first time, directly observed by hologram.