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This work reports a detailed investigation of the template-free synthesis of Pt nanowires via the chemical reduction of Pt salt precursors with formic-acid. The results indicate that both the oxidation state of Pt in the salt and the pH value of the aqueous solution comprising the platinum salt and formic acid are critical factors for the formation of Pt nanowires. Nanowires are obtained from platinum atoms in a +IV oxidation state, with ligating chloride anions (H2 PtCl6 and K2 PtCl6 ) or nonligating chloride anions (PtCl4 ). Increasing the pH of the aqueous Pt salt and HCOOH solution leads to a drastic reduction of the nanowires' length between pH 3 and 4.5. A mechanism involving formate as a reducing agent and formic acid as a structure directing agent explains these results. The Pt nanowires are stable up to 200 °C; therefore, these nanowires are suitable for use as catalysts in proton-exchange-membrane fuel cell. The optimized synthesis conditions are then selected for investigating the kinetics of the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) of such nanowires in a fuel cell. The ORR mass activity of the Pt nanowires is 130 A g(-1) Pt at 0.9 V iR-free potential; significantly higher than that of two commercial Pt/C catalysts tested in the same conditions. The higher mass activity is explained based on a higher surface specific activity. Accelerated degradation tests indicate that Pt nanowires supported on carbon are as stable as Pt nanoparticles supported on carbon.

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A new strategy is developed in which cadmium‐doped zinc sulfide (CdZnS) is used as the outermost shell to synthesize red, green, and blue (RGB) quantum dots (QDs) with the core/shell structures of CdZnSe/ZnSe/ZnS/CdZnS, CdZnSe/ZnSe/ZnSeS/CdZnS, and CdZnSe/ZnSeS/ZnS/CdZnS, respectively. Firstly, the inner ZnS and ZnSe shells confine the excitons inside the cores of QDs and provide a better lattice matching with respect to the outermost shell, which ensures high photoluminescence quantum yields of QDs. Secondly, the CdZnS shell affords its QDs with shallow valence bands (VBs). Therefore, the CdZnS shell could be used as a springboard, which decreases the energy barrier for hole injection from polymers to QDs to be below 1.0 eV. It makes the holes to be easily injected into the QD EMLs and enables a balanced recombination of charge carriers in quantum dot light‐emitting diodes (QLEDs). Thirdly, the RGB QLEDs made by these new QDs exhibit peak external quantum efficiencies (EQEs) of 20.2%, 19.2%, and 8.4%, respectively. In addition, the QLEDs exhibit unexpected luminance values at low applied voltages and therefore high power efficiencies. From these results, it is evident that CdZnS could act as an excellent shell and hole injection springboard to afford high performance QLEDs.