TiO2 with arbitrarily tunable facets is directly grown onto the conductive substrate. H+ promotes the growth of the high energy {001} facet rather than F−.

We reported a facile method to transform surface energy of plain cotton and silk into different tribopolarities. A single natural textile based TENG generated the maximum output voltage of 216.8 V and output current of 50.3 uA.

Although single-atom catalysts (SACs) show significantly higher catalytic performance compared to conventional and nanoparticle-based catalysts (NPs) at the same amount of metal loading, their overall catalytic performance may still be unable to compete with the NPs in many applications due to the limited active sites. Generally, trace amounts of metal (less than 1 wt%) can be successfully loaded onto supports in an atomically-dispersed feature, and higher metal loading usually results in aggregation of the metal atoms. Hence, it is very important to further increase the density of isolated metal atoms in these rising-star SACs to pave the ways for widespread applications or even to replace the NPs. On the other hand, it is well known that this is one of the most challenging topics on SACs research. In this review, the advanced strategies to overcome this challenge and achieve high loading of isolated metal atoms on various supports will be extensively discussed together with the examples showing the research efforts to enrich the metal active sites from the pioneer works with metal loading below 0.2 wt% to the recently-reported SACs with metal loading over 20 wt%. Besides, there are still plenty of rooms to further improve the quantity and quality of metal loading on different supports, and outlooks of this scope is provided. We hope that this comprehensive review aids in the development of synthesis techniques for the new-generation SACs with richer active sites.

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Engineering crystal facets have been proved as one of the most promising strategies for promoting photocatalytic performance of titanium dioxide (TiO2). The earlier research in this field focused on trying to obtain as high ratio of the high energy {001} facet as possible, while later found that the co‐existence of facets is more beneficial. However, controlling crystals to expose suitable facet pairs and facet ratios remains challenging. In this work, we not only comprehensively match possible low‐index facets such as {101}‐{001} and {010}‐{001} facet pairs, but also systematically tune their ratios. Moreover, these faceted particles can be directly grown onto the transparent conductive substrate, which can be directly used as a photoanode. So, their intrinsic behaviors can be precisely evaluated without interference from other exogenous factors such as binders, additives, or assembly skills. Various characterization techniques reveal that both the types of facet pairs and the ratios of facets play crucial roles on photocatalytic behaviors, due to the different electron affinity and dissociative adsorption ability of water molecules on a particular facet. Charge transport and surface chemistry have been thoroughly investigated to identify the underlying mechanism. This work sheds light on a material design strategy considering a suitable match of facet pairs for optimizing photocatalytic performance for a wide variety of applications.

BODIPY triad, BD, was prepared as co-sensitizer. The stepwise sensitization method exhibited higher PCE, compared to the co-deposition method.

This research work undertook a comparative study of the promoting effects of graphene in TiO2 photoanodes. The aim of this work was to investigate the effects of the types and concentration of reduced graphene oxides (rGO) on structure properties and the photovoltaic performance of TiO2 based electrodes. Graphene oxide (GO) was prepared by using modified Hammer’s method. Next, GO was reduced by using two different approaches, which were the chemical reduction with vitamin C and thermal reduction. The latter approach was also carried out in situ during the fabrication and heat treatment processes of the dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). From the results, it was found that the photovoltaic performance of the DSSCs containing the GO/TiO2 electrode, in which the GO phase experienced an in situ thermal reduction, was superior to those containing rGO/TiO2. It was also found that the power conversion efficiency of the DSSCs changed with the concentration of graphene in a nonlinear fashion. The optimum concentrations of graphene, corresponding to the highest PCE values of the GO/TiO2 based DSSC (3.69%) and that of the rGO/TiO2 based cell (2.90%), were 0.01 wt% and 0.03 wt%, respectively.

Poly(perflurododecyacrylate) encapsulated, silver-coated cotton electrodes that retained low surface resistance, being water-repellent and oxidative resistance was created for wearable electronics.