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The development of advanced solar energy technologies, which efficiently convert solar energy to heat and then to electricity, remains a significant challenge in the pursuit of clean energy production. Here, this challenge is addressed by designing a photothermal absorber composed of liquid gallium particles and a natural polyphenol-based coordination ink. The design of this composite takes advantage of the tuneable light absorption properties of the polyphenol inks and can also be applied onto flexible substrates. While the ink utilizes two types of coordination complexes to absorb light at different wavelengths, the liquid gallium particles with high thermal and electrical properties provide enhanced thermoelectric effect. As such, the photothermal composite exhibits a broad-spectrum light absorption and highly efficient solar-to-heat conversion. A thermoelectric generator coated with the photothermal composite exhibits an impressive voltage output of ≈185.3 mV when exposed to 1 Sun illumination, without requiring any optical concentration, which sets a new record for a power density at 345.5 µW cm -2 . This work showcases the synergistic combination of natural compound-based light-absorbing coordination complexes with liquid metals to achieve a strong photothermal effect and their integration into thermoelectric devices with powerful light harvesting capabilities., (© 2023 The Authors. Advanced Materials published by Wiley-VCH GmbH.)

A green carbon capture and conversion technology offering scalability and economic viability for mitigating CO 2 emissions is reported. The technology uses suspensions of gallium liquid metal to reduce CO 2 into carbonaceous solid products and O 2 at near room temperature. The nonpolar nature of the liquid gallium interface allows the solid products to instantaneously exfoliate, hence keeping active sites accessible. The solid co-contributor of silver-gallium rods ensures a cyclic sustainable process. The overall process relies on mechanical energy as the input, which drives nano-dimensional triboelectrochemical reactions. When a gallium/silver fluoride mix at 7:1 mass ratio is employed to create the reaction material, 92% efficiency is obtained at a remarkably low input energy of 230 kWh (excluding the energy used for dissolving CO 2 ) for the capture and conversion of a tonne of CO 2 . This green technology presents an economical solution for CO 2 emissions., (© 2021 Wiley-VCH GmbH.)

The introduction of trace impurities within the doping processes of semiconductors is still a technological challenge for the electronics industries. By taking advantage of the selective enrichment of liquid metal interfaces, and harvesting the doped metal oxide semiconductor layers, the complexity of the process can be mitigated and a high degree of control over the outcomes can be achieved. Here, a mechanism of natural filtering for the preparation of doped 2D semiconducting sheets based on the different migration tendencies of metallic elements in the bulk competing for enriching the interfaces is proposed. As a model, liquid metal alloys with different weight ratios of Sn and Bi in the bulk are employed for harvesting Bi 2 O 3 -doped SnO nanosheets. In this model, Sn shows a much stronger tendency than Bi to occupy surface sites of the Bi-Sn alloys, even at the very high concentrations of Bi in the bulk. This provides the opportunity for creating SnO 2D sheets with tightly controlled Bi 2 O 3 dopants. By way of example, it is demonstrated how such nanosheets could be made selective to both reducing and oxidizing environmental gases. The process demonstrated here offers significant opportunities for future synthesis and fabrication processes in the electronics industries., (© 2021 Wiley-VCH GmbH.)

Room-temperature synthesis of 2D graphitic materials (2D-GMs) remains an elusive aim, especially with electrochemical means. Here, it is shown that liquid metals render this possible as they offer catalytic activity and an ultrasmooth templating interface that promotes Frank-van der Merwe regime growth, while allowing facile exfoliation due to the absence of interfacial forces as a nonpolar liquid. The 2D-GMs are formed at low onset potential and can be in situ doped depending on the choice of organic precursors and the electrochemical set-up. The materials are tuned to exhibit porous or pinhole-free morphologies and are engineered for their degree of oxidation and number of layers. The proposed liquid-metal-based room-temperature electrochemical route can be expanded to many other 2D materials., (© 2020 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.)

Graphene-based materials, primarily graphene oxide (GO), have shown excellent separation and purification characteristics. Precise molecular sieving is potentially possible using graphene oxide-based membranes, if the porosity can be matched with the kinetic diameters of the gas molecules, which is possible via the tuning of graphene oxide interlayer spacing to take advantage of gas species interactions with graphene oxide channels. Here, highly effective separation of gases from their mixtures by using uniquely tailored porosity in mildly reduced graphene oxide (rGO) based membranes is reported. The gas permeation experiments, adsorption measurement, and density functional theory calculations show that this membrane preparation method allows tuning the selectivity for targeted molecules via the intercalation of specific transition metal ions. In particular, rGO membranes intercalated with Fe ions that offer ordered porosity, show excellent reproducible N 2 /CO 2 selectivity of ≈97 at 110 mbar, which is an unprecedented value for graphene-based membranes. By exploring the impact of Fe intercalated rGO membranes, it is revealed that the increasing transmembrane pressure leads to a transition of N 2 diffusion mode from Maxwell-Stefan type to Knudsen type. This study will lead to new avenues for the applications of graphene for efficiently separating CO 2 from N 2 and other gases., (© 2020 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.)

Holey 2D metal oxides have shown great promise as functional materials for energy storage and catalysts. Despite impressive performance, their processing is challenged by the requirement of templates plus capping agents or high temperatures; these materials also exhibit excessive thicknesses and low yields. The present work reports a metal-based coordination polymer (MCP) strategy to synthesize polycrystalline, holey, metal oxide (MO) nanosheets with thicknesses as low as two-unit cells. The process involves rapid exfoliation of bulk-layered, MCPs (Ce-, Ti-, Zr-based) into atomically thin MCPs at room temperature, followed by transformation into holey 2D MOs upon the removal of organic linkers in aqueous solution. Further, this work represents an extra step for decorating the holey nanosheets using precursors of transition metals to engineer their band alignments, establishing a route to optimize their photocatalysis. The work introduces a simple, high-yield, room-temperature, and template-free approach to synthesize ultrathin holey nanosheets with high-level functionalities., (© 2019 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.)