A robust method for epitaxial deposition of Au onto the surface of Ag nanostructures is demonstrated, which allows effective conversion of Ag nano­structures of various morphologies into Ag@Au counterparts, with the anisotropic ones showing excellent plasmonic properties comparable to the original Ag nanostructures while significantly enhanced stability. Sulfite plays a determining role in the success of this epitaxial deposition as it strongly complexes with gold cations to completely prevent galvanic replacement while it also remains benign to the Ag surface to avoid any ligand‐assisted oxidative etching. By using Ag nanoplates as an example, it is shown that the corresponding Ag@Au nanoplates possess remarkable plasmonic properties that are virtually Ag‐like, in clear contrast to Ag@Au nanospheres that exhibit much lower plasmonic activities than their Ag counterparts. As a result, they display high durability and activities in surface‐enhanced Raman scattering applications. This strategy may represent a general platform for depositing a noble metal on less stable metal nanostructures, thus opening up new opportunities in rational design of functional metal nanomaterials for a broad range of applications.

Reduced graphene oxide-azobenzene (RGO-AZO) hybrids were prepared via covalent functionalization for long-term solar thermal storage. Thermal barrier (ΔEa) of cis to tran reversion and thermal storage (ΔH) were improved by molecular hydrogen bonds (H-bonds) through ortho- or para-substitution of AZO. Intramolecular H-bonds thermally stabilized cis-ortho-AZO on RGO with a long-term half-life of 5400 h (ΔEa = 1.2 eV), which was much longer than that of RGO-para-AZO (116 h). RGO-para-AZO with one intermolecular H-bond showed a high density of thermal storage up to 269.8 kJ kg−1 compared with RGO-ortho-AZO (149.6 kJ kg−1) with multiple intra- and intermolecular H-bonds of AZO according to relaxed stable structures. Thermal storage in experiment was the same order magnitude to theoretical data based on ΔH calculated by density functional theory and packing density. Photoactive RGO-AZO hybrid can be developed for high-performance solar thermal storage by optimizing molecular H-bonds.

Although aqueous synthesis of nanocrystals is advantageous in terms of the cost, convenience, environmental friendliness, and surface cleanness of the product, nanocrystals of Pt and non-noble metal alloys are difficult to obtain with controlled morphology and composition from this synthesis owing to a huge gap between the reduction potentials of respective metal salts. This huge gap could now be remedied by introducing a sulfite into the aqueous synthesis, which is believed to resemble an electroless plating mechanism, giving rise to a colloid of Pt-M (M=Ni, Co, Fe) alloy nanowires with an ultrasmall thickness (ca. 2.6 nm) in a high yield. The sulfite also leads to the formation of surface M-S bonds and thus atomic-level Pt/M-S(OH) interfaces for greatly boosted hydrogen evolution kinetics under alkaline conditions. An activity of 75.3 mA cm has been achieved with 3 μg of Pt in 1 m KOH at an overpotential of 70 mV, which is superior to previously reported catalysts.

Ultrathin Pt nanoplates exposing {111} facets are synthesized by galvanic-replacement-free templating of conveniently available Ag nanoplates, showing enhanced oxygen reduction activity.