A MoS 2 /graphene hybrid aerogel synthesized with two-dimensional MoS 2 sheets coating a high surface area graphene aerogel scaffold is characterized and used for ultrasensitive NO 2 detection. The combination of graphene and MoS 2 leads to improved sensing properties with the graphene scaffold providing high specifi c surface area and high electrical and thermal conductivity and the single to few-layer MoS 2 sheets providing high sensitivity and selectivity to NO 2 . The hybrid aerogel is integrated onto a low-power microheater platform to probe the gas sensing performance. At room temperature, the sensor exhibits an ultralow detection limit of 50 ppb NO 2 . By heating the material to 200 °C, the response and recovery times to reach 90% of the fi nal signal decrease to <1 min, while retaining the low detection limit. The MoS 2 / graphene hybrid also shows good selectivity for NO 2 against H 2 and CO, especially when compared to bare graphene aerogel. The unique structure of the hybrid aerogel is responsible for the ultrasensitive, selective, and fast NO 2 sensing. The improved sensing performance of this hybrid aerogel also suggests the possibility of other 2D material combinations for further sensing applications.

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Metal halide perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have attracted extensive research interest for next-generation solution-processed photovoltaic devices because of their high solar-to-electric power conversion efficiency (PCE) and low fabrication cost. Although the world’s best PSC successfully achieves a considerable PCE of over 20% within a very limited timeframe after intensive efforts, the stability, high cost, and up-scaling of PSCs still remain issues. Recently, inorganic perovskite material, CsPbBr3, is emerging as a promising photo-sensitizer with excellent durability and thermal stability, but the efficiency is still embarrassing. In this work, we intend to address these issues by exploiting CsPbBr3 as light absorber, accompanied by using Cu-phthalocyanine (CuPc) as hole transport material (HTM) and carbon as counter electrode. The optimal device acquires a decent PCE of 6.21%, over 60% higher than those of the HTM-free devices. The systematic characterization and analysis reveal a more effective charge transfer process and a suppressed charge recombination in PSCs after introducing CuPc as hole transfer layer. More importantly, our devices exhibit an outstanding durability and a promising thermal stability, making it rather meaningful in future fabrication and application of PSCs.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s40820-018-0187-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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Power packs integrating both photovoltaic parts and energy storage parts have gained great scientific and technological attention due to the increasing demand for green energy and the tendency for miniaturization and multifunctionalization in electronics industry. In this study, we demonstrate novel integration of perovskite solar cell and solid-state supercapacitor for power packs. The perovskite solar cell is integrated with the supercapacitor based on common carbon electrodes to hybridize photoelectric conversion and energy storage. The power pack achieves a voltage of 0.84 V when the supercapacitor is charged by the perovskite solar cell under the AM 1.5G white light illumination with a 0.071 cm active area, reaching an energy storage proportion of 76% and an overall conversion efficiency of 5.26%. When the supercapacitor is precharged at 1.0 V, an instant overall output efficiency of 22.9% can be achieved if the perovskite solar cell and supercapacitor are connected in series, exhibiting great potential in the applications of solar energy storage and flexible electronics such as portable and wearable devices.

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Mesoporous NiO nanosheets were directly grown on three-dimensional (3D) carbon cloth substrate, which can be used as binder-free anode for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). These mesoporous nanosheets were interconnected with each other and forming a network with interval voids, which give rise to large surface area and efficient buffering of the volume change. The integrated hierarchical electrode maintains all the advantageous features of directly building two-dimensional (2D) nanostructues on 3D conductive substrate, such as short diffusion length, strain relaxation and fast electron transport. As the LIB anode, it presents a high reversible capacity of 892.6 mAh g−1 after 120 cycles at a current density of 100 mA g−1 and 758.1 mAh g−1 at a high charging rate of 700 mA g−1 after 150 cycles. As demonstrated in this work, the hierarchical NiO nanosheets/carbon cloth also shows high flexibility, which can be directly used as the anode to build flexible LIBs. The introduced facile and low-cost method to prepare NiO nanosheets on flexible and conductive carbon cloth substrate is promising for the fabrication of high performance energy storage devices, especially for next-generation wearable electronic devices.