Recently, there has been strong interest in flexible and wearable electronics to meet the technological demands of modern society. Environmentally-friendly and scalable electronic textiles is a key area that is still significantly underdeveloped. Here, we describe a novel strain sensor composed of aligned cellulose acetate (CA) nanofibers with belt-like morphology and a reduced graphene oxide (RGO) layer. The unique spatial alignment, microstructure and wettability of CA nanofibrous membranes facilitate their close contact with deposited GO colloids. After a portable and fast hot-press process within 700 s at 150 °C, the GO on CA membrane can be facilely reduced to a conductive RGO layer. Moreover, the connection among contiguous CA nanofibers and the interaction between the GO and CA substrate were both highly enhanced, resulting in superior mechanical strength with Young's modulus of 1.3 GPa and small sheet resistance lower than 10 kΩ. Therefore, the conductive RGO/CA membrane was successfully utilized as a strain sensor in a broad deformation range and with versatile deformation types. Moreover, the distinctive mechanical strength under different stretch angles endowed the well-aligned RGO/CA film with intriguing sensitivity against stress direction. Such a cost-effective and environmentally-friendly method can be easily extended to the scalable production of graphene-based flexible electronic textiles.

Improved catalytic performance was achieved when the well-designed Fe2O3/N-RGO sheets served as a new and versatile scaffold for Pt nanocrystals.

Developing a facile strategy to synthesize template-free TiO membrane with stable super-hydrophilic surface is still a daunting challenge. In this work, super-hydrophilicity (close to 0°) and underwater super-oleophobicity (165°) have been successfully demonstrated on a hierarchical AlO/TiO membrane, which is prepared via a facile electrospinning method followed by simple calcination in air. The precisely-tuned AlO heterojunctions grew in situ and dispersed uniformly on the TiO surface, resulting in an 'island in the sea' configuration. Such a unique feature allows not only achieving super-hydrophilicity by maximizing the surface roughness and enhancing the hydrogen bonding, but also improving the adsorption capacity toward different toxic dyes utilizing the abundant adsorption sites protected by the hierarchical nanostructure during sintering. The new AlO/TiO nanofibrous membrane can serve as a novel filter for gravity driven oil/water separation along with dye removal, achieving 97.7% of oil/water separation efficiency and 98% of dye capture, thanks to their superb wettability and the sophisticated adsorptive performance. Our presented fabrication strategy can be extended to a wide range of ceramic materials and inspires their advanced applications in water purification under harsh liquid-phase environments.

Photocatalyst‐assisted degradation of organic pollutants, which exhibits a novel strategy for solar‐energy utilization, possesses enormous potential in various applications. Extending the light‐absorption range in the spectrum of sunlight and improving light‐conversion efficiency are always primary issues to enhance the catalytic performance of these photocatalysts. Herein, a new structure of gold‐nanorod‐decorated TiO2 rambutan‐like microspheres is designed, which exhibits superior photocatalytic ability toward Rhodamine B in the range of visible light due to the 3D distribution of the TiO2 branches on the surface of the microspheres, which prompts the multireflection of photons. The absorption rate of photons is thereby tremendously enhanced. This is beneficial for the generation of hot electrons originating from the localized surface plasmonic resonance of Au nanorods, which can be used to both initiate the reaction and produce the photothermal effect. Hot electrons generated by a single Au nanorod in microspheres to initiate the degradation reaction can be as high as 2.5 times of those in the nanowires' counterpart. Moreover, the heating power of a single Au nanorod in microspheres reaches up to 4.4 times higher than that in nanowires, which further accelerates the degradation rate. The reaction pathway of visible‐light‐assisted RhB degradation catalyzed by Au/TiO2 microspheres goes through an initial N‐deethylation process instead of the complete cycloreversion catalyzed by pure TiO2 microspheres under UV irradiation. This strategy of structure design for improved photon absorption, which achieves high degradation rate and photothermal effect, is promising for the development of novel photocatalysts.

Hydrogen energy is considered a competitive and environmentally friendly carrier owing to its high calorific value, abundant reserves, carbon-free emission, and renewability. Water splitting for sustainable production of hydrogen from water via sunlight or clean energy derived electricity has attracted paramount attention. Photocatalytic water splitting provides a clean solution to produce hydrogen by taking advantage of abundant solar power. Due to their unique physico-chemical properties, metal/metal oxide based composite electrospun semiconductor photocatalysts show great potential to supplant some of the non-oxide photocatalysts and other nanostructures in water splitting. The key issues to the commercialization and scale-up production remain on the fabrication, modification and performance of photocatalysts. In this review article, we showcase recent significant progress in the fabrication of semiconductor photocatalysts toward water splitting based on versatile electrospinning. The modification and performance improving strategies for a wide range of metal/metal oxide (single, mixed, metal/carbon cocatalysts) electrospun semiconductors including the structure and compositional engineering are presented. Furthermore, we also discuss the challenges and future perspectives of electrospinning toward the rational design and facile fabrication of photocatalysts.