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Doping of graphene with nitrogen imparted bifunctional electrocatalytic activities for efficient energy conversion and storage.

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X-ray crystallography has been central to the development of many fields of science over the past century. It has now matured to a point that as long as good-quality crystals are available, their atomic structure can be routinely determined in three dimensions. However, many samples in physics, chemistry, materials science, nanoscience, geology, and biology are noncrystalline, and thus their three-dimensional structures are not accessible by traditional x-ray crystallography. Overcoming this hurdle has required the development of new coherent imaging methods to harness new coherent x-ray light sources. Here we review the revolutionary advances that are transforming x-ray sources and imaging in the 21st century.

In recent years, increasing interest has been devoted to synthesizing graphene-semiconductor nanocomposites as efficient photocatalysts for extensive applications. Unfortunately, it is still challenging to make uniform graphene-semiconductor composite films with controllable film thickness and architecture, which are of paramount importance to meet the application requirements. In this work, stable aqueous dispersion of polymer-modified graphene nanosheets (GNs) was prepared via in situ reduction of exfoliated graphite oxide in the presence of cationic poly(allylamine hydrochloride) (PAH). The resultant water-soluble PAH-modified GNs (GNs-PAH) in conjunction with tailor-made negatively charged CdS quantum dots (QDs) were utilized as nanobuilding blocks for sequential layer-by-layer (LbL) self-assembly of well-defined GNs-CdS QDs hybrid films, in which CdS QDs overspread evenly on the two-dimensional (2D) GNs. It was found that the alternating GNs-CdS QDs multilayered films showed significantly enhanced photoelectrochemical and photocatalytic activities under visible light irradiation as compared to pure CdS QDs and GNs films. The enhancement was attributed to the judicious integration of CdS QDs with GNs in an alternating manner, which maximizes the 2D structural advantage of GNs in GNs-CdS QDs composite films. In addition, photocatalytic and photoelectrochemical mechanisms of the GNs-CdS QDs multilayered films were also discussed. It is anticipated that our work may open new directions for the fabrication of uniform semiconductor/GNs hybrid films for a wide range of applications.

Transmission electron microscopy is a powerful imaging tool that has found broad application in materials science, nanoscience and biology. With the introduction of aberration-corrected electron lenses, both the spatial resolution and the image quality in transmission electron microscopy have been significantly improved and resolution below 0.5 ångströms has been demonstrated. To reveal the three-dimensional (3D) structure of thin samples, electron tomography is the method of choice, with cubic-nanometre resolution currently achievable. Discrete tomography has recently been used to generate a 3D atomic reconstruction of a silver nanoparticle two to three nanometres in diameter, but this statistical method assumes prior knowledge of the particle's lattice structure and requires that the atoms fit rigidly on that lattice. Here we report the experimental demonstration of a general electron tomography method that achieves atomic-scale resolution without initial assumptions about the sample structure. By combining a novel projection alignment and tomographic reconstruction method with scanning transmission electron microscopy, we have determined the 3D structure of an approximately ten-nanometre gold nanoparticle at 2.4-ångström resolution. Although we cannot definitively locate all of the atoms inside the nanoparticle, individual atoms are observed in some regions of the particle and several grains are identified in three dimensions. The 3D surface morphology and internal lattice structure revealed are consistent with a distorted icosahedral multiply twinned particle. We anticipate that this general method can be applied not only to determine the 3D structure of nanomaterials at atomic-scale resolution, but also to improve the spatial resolution and image quality in other tomography fields.

Carbon nanotubes are promising materials for various applications. In recent years, progress in manufacturing and functionalizing carbon nanotubes has been made to achieve the control of bulk and surface properties including the wettability, acid-base properties, adsorption, electric conductivity and capacitance. In order to gain the optimal benefit of carbon nanotubes, comprehensive understanding on manufacturing and functionalizing carbon nanotubes ought to be systematically developed. This review summarizes methodologies of manufacturing carbon nanotubes via arc discharge, laser ablation and chemical vapor deposition and functionalizing carbon nanotubes through surface oxidation and activation, doping of heteroatoms, halogenation, sulfonation, grafting, polymer coating, noncovalent functionalization and nanoparticle attachment. The characterization techniques detecting the bulk nature and surface properties as well as the effects of various functionalization approaches on modifying the surface properties for specific applications in catalysis including heterogeneous catalysis, photocatalysis, photoelectrocatalysis and electrocatalysis are highlighted.