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Suppressing the oppositely orientated hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) domains during the growth is of great challenge due to its bipolar structure. It is found that h-BN domains grown on onefold symmetric Cu(102) or (103) share a unique orientation, with one zigzag edge of the h-BN triangles perpendicular to the symmetry axis of the substrate surface.

Organolead halide perovskites (e.g., CH3NH3PbI3) have caught tremendous attention for their excellent optoelectronic properties and applications, especially as the active material for solar cells. Perovskite crystal quality and dimension is crucial for the fabrication of high-performance optoelectronic and photovoltaic devices. Herein the controlled synthesis of organolead halide perovskite CH3NH3PbI3 nanoplatelets on SiO2/Si substrates is investigated via a convenient two-step vapor transport deposition technique. The thickness and size of the perovskite can be well-controlled from few-layers to hundred nanometers by altering the synthesis time and temperature. Raman characterizations reveal that the evolutions of Raman peaks are sensitive to the thickness. Furthermore, from the time-resolved photoluminescence measurements, the best optoelectronic performance of the perovskite platelet is attributed with thickness of ≈30 nm to its dominant longest lifetime (≈4.5 ns) of perovskite excitons, which means lower surface traps or defects. This work supplies an alternative to the synthesis of high-quality organic perovskite and their possible optoelectronic applications with the most suitable materials. Accepted version

A facile all-chemical vapor deposition approach is designed, which allows both sequentially grown Gr and monolayer MoS2 in the same growth process, thus allowing the direct construction of MoS2 /Gr vertical heterostructures on Au foils. A weak n-doping effect and an intrinsic bandgap of MoS2 are obtained from MoS2 /Gr/Au via scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy characterization. The exciton binding energy is accurately deduced by combining photoluminescence measurements.

Stable metallic 1T-WS2 nanoribbons with zigzag chain superlattices, highly stabilized by ammonia-ion intercalation, are produced using a facile bottom-up process. The atomic structure of the nanoribbons, including W-W reconstruction and W-S distorted octahedral coordination, results in distinctive electrical transport and optical Raman scattering properties that are very different from semiconducting 2H-WS2 . The correlations between structure and properties are further confirmed by theory calculations.

Controlled stacking of different two-dimensional (2D) atomic layers will greatly expand the family of 2D materials and broaden their applications. A novel approach for synthesizing MoS2 /WS2 heterostructures by chemical vapor deposition has been developed. The successful synthesis of pristine MoS2 /WS2 heterostructures is attributed to using core-shell WO3-x /MoO3-x nanowires as a precursor, which naturally ensures the sequential growth of MoS2 and WS2 . The obtained heterostructures exhibited high crystallinity, strong interlayer interaction, and high mobility, suggesting their promising applications in nanoelectronics. The stacking orientations of the two layers were also explored from both experimental and theoretical aspects. It is elucidated that the rational design of precursors can accurately control the growth of high-quality 2D heterostructures. Moreover, this simple approach opens up a new way for creating various novel 2D heterostructures by using a large variety of heteronanomaterials as precursors.

The design of an ideal heterogeneous catalyst for hydrogenation reaction is to impart the catalyst with synergetic surface sites active cooperatively toward different reaction species. Herein a new strategy is presented for the creation of such a catalyst with dual active sites by decorating metal and metal oxide nanoparticles with ultrafine nanoclusters at atomic level. This strategy is exemplified by the design and synthesis of Ru nanoclusters supported on Ni/NiO nanoparticles. This Ru-nanocluster/Ni/NiO-nanoparticle catalyst is shown to exhibit ultrahigh catalytic activity for benzene hydrogenation reaction, which is 55 times higher than Ru-Ni alloy or Ru on Ni catalysts. The nanoclusters-on-nanoparticles are characterized by high-resolution transmission electron microscope, Cs-corrected high angle annular dark field-scanning transmission electron microscopy, elemental mapping, high-sensitivity low-energy ion scattering, and X-ray absorption spectra. The atomic-scale nanocluster-nanoparticle structural characteristics constitute the basis for creating the catalytic synergy of the surface sites, where Ru provides hydrogen adsorption and dissociation site, Ni acts as a "bridge" for transferring H species to benzene adsorbed and activated at NiO site, which has significant implications to multifunctional nanocatalysts design for wide ranges of catalytic reactions.

Semiconducting MoS₂(₁-x) Se₂x mono-layers where x = 0-0.40 are successfully grown over large areas. A random arrangement of the S and Se atoms and a tunable bandgap photoluminescence are observed. Atomically thin, 2D semiconductor alloys with tunable bandgaps have potential applications in nano- and opto-electronics. Field-effect transistors fabricated with the monolayers exhibit high on/off ratios of >10(5).

ispartof: SOLAR RRL vol:3 issue:8 status: published

The development of the photostable higher-order multiphoton-excited (MPE) upconversion single microcrystalline material is fundamentally and technologically important, but very challenging. Here, up to five-photon excited luminescence in a host-guest metal-organic framework (MOF) and perovskite quantum dot (QD) hybrid single crystal ZJU-28⊃MAPbBr3 is shown via an in situ growth approach. Such a MOF strategy not only results in a high QD loading concentration, but also significantly diminishes the aggregation-caused quenching (ACQ) effect, provides effective surface passivation, and greatly reduces the contact of the QDs with the external bad atmosphere due to the confinement effect and protection of the framework. These advantages make the resulting ZJU-28⊃MAPbBr3 single crystals possess high PLQY of ≈51.1%, a high multiphoton action cross-sections that can rival the current highest record (measured in toluene solution), and excellent photostability. These findings liberate the excellent luminescence and nonlinear optical properties of perovskite QDs from the solution system to the solid single-crystal system, which provide a new avenue for the exploitation of high-performance multiphoton excited hybrid single microcrystal for future optoelectronic and micro-nano photonic integration applications.

Ultrathin tin-doped zinc oxide (Sn-doped ZnO) nanowires with uniform diameters of 2.3 ± 0.2 nm were synthesized by means of a facile colloidal method employing an aminolysis approach. This finding suggests that the introduction of group IV dopants may serve as an effective strategy to control the shape of doped ZnO nanocrystals. This doping procedure may be extended to the synthesis of other doped oxide nanocrystals.

Conventional methods to prepare large-area graphene for transparent conducting electrodes involve the wet etching of the metal catalyst and the transfer of the graphene film, which can degrade the film through the creation of wrinkles, cracks, or tears. The resulting films may also be obscured by residual metal impurities and polymer contaminants. Here, it is shown that direct growth of large-area flat nanographene films on silica can be achieved at low temperature (400 °C) by chemical vapor deposition without the use of metal catalysts. Raman spectroscopy and TEM confirm the formation of a hexagonal atomic network of sp2-bonded carbon with a domain size of about 3–5 nm. Further spectroscopic analysis reveals the formation of SiC between the nanographene and SiO2, indicating that SiC acts as a catalyst. The optical transmittance of the graphene films is comparable with transferred CVD graphene grown on Cu foils. Despite the fact that the electrical conductivity is an order of magnitude lower than CVD graphene grown on metals, the sheet resistance remains 1–2 orders of magnitude better than well-reduced graphene oxides.

A metal-semiconductor-metal (M-S-M) model for quantitative analysis of current–voltage (I–V) characteristics of semiconducting nanowires is described and applied to fit experimental I–V curves of Bi2S3 nanowire transistors. The I–V characteristics of semiconducting nanowires are found to depend sensitively on the contacts, in particular on the Schottky barrier height and contact area, and the M-S-M model is shown to be able to reproduce all experimentally observed I–V characteristics using only few fitting variables. A procedure for decoupling contact effects from that of the intrinsic parameters of the semiconducting nanowires, such as conductivity, carrier mobility and doping concentration is proposed, demonstrated using experimental I–V curves obtained from Bi2S3 nanowires and compared with the field-effect based method.

Rings of bundled single-walled carbon nanotubes with perfectly toroidal geometries (see figure), are fabricated in high yields by a floating chemical vapor deposition process involving the thermal decomposition of acetylene. The nano-tube rings can be grown with varying densities on a wide variety of substrates at relatively low temperatures, which is a significant advantage for nanoelectronics applications.

As a member of the group IVB transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) family, hafnium disulfide (HfS2 ) is recently predicted to exhibit higher carrier mobility and higher tunneling current density than group VIB (Mo and W) TMDs. However, the synthesis of high-quality HfS2 crystals, sparsely reported, has greatly hindered the development of this new field. Here, a facile strategy for controlled synthesis of high-quality atomic layered HfS2 crystals by van der Waals epitaxy is reported. Density functional theory calculations are applied to elucidate the systematic epitaxial growth process of the S-edge and Hf-edge. Impressively, the HfS2 back-gate field-effect transistors display a competitive mobility of 7.6 cm2 V-1 s-1 and an ultrahigh on/off ratio exceeding 108 . Meanwhile, ultrasensitive near-infrared phototransistors based on the HfS2 crystals (indirect bandgap ≈1.45 eV) exhibit an ultrahigh responsivity exceeding 3.08 × 105 A W-1 , which is 109 -fold higher than 9 × 10-5 A W-1 obtained from the multilayer MoS2 in near-infrared photodetection. Moreover, an ultrahigh photogain exceeding 4.72 × 105 and an ultrahigh detectivity exceeding 4.01 × 1012 Jones, superior to the vast majority of the reported 2D-materials-based phototransistors, imply a great promise in TMD-based 2D electronic and optoelectronic applications.

2D black phosphorus (BP) and rhenium dichalcogenides (ReX2 , X = S, Se) possess intrinsic in-plane anisotropic physical properties arising from their low crystal lattice symmetry, which has inspired their novel applications in electronics, photonics, and optoelectronics. Different from BP with poor environmental stability, ReX2 has low-symmetry distorted 1T structures with excellent stability. In ReX2 , the electronic structure is weakly dependent on layer numbers, which restricts their property tunability and device applications. Here, the properties are tuned, such as optical bandgap, Raman anisotropy, and electrical transport, by alloying 2D ReS2 and ReSe2 . Photoluminescence emission energy of ReS2(1-x) Se2x monolayers (x from 0 to 1 with a step of 0.1) can be continuously tuned ranging from 1.62 to 1.31 eV. Polarization behavior of Raman modes, such as ReS2 -like peak at 212 cm-1 , shifts as the composition changes. Anisotropic electrical property is maintained in ReS2(1-x) Se2x with high electron mobility along b-axis for all compositions of ReS2(1-x) Se2x .

Organic–inorganic metal halide perovskites have recently demonstrated outstanding efficiencies in photovoltaics as well as highly promising performances for a wide range of optoelectronic applications such as lasing, light emission, optical detectors, and even for radiation detection. Key to the realization of functional perovskite micro/nanosystems on the ubiquitous silicon optoelectronics platform is through sophisticated lithography. Despite the rapid progress made in halide perovskite lasing, direct lithographic patterning of perovskite films to form optical cavities on conventional substrates remains extremely challenging. This study realizes room‐temperature high‐quality factor whispering‐gallery‐mode lasing (Q ≈ 1210) from patterned lead halide perovskite microplatelets fabricated in periodic arrays on silicon substrate with micropatterned BN film as the buffer layer. By varying the size of the platelets, modal selectivity for single mode lasing can be achieved with different cavity sizes or by simply breaking the structural symmetry of the cavity through designing the pattern. Importantly, this work demonstrates a straightforward, versatile bottom‐up scalable strategy to realize high‐quality periodic perovskite arrays with variable cavity sizes for large‐area light‐emitting and optical gain applications.

A simple one-step hydrothermal method for large-scale synthesis of ultralong single-crystalline Bi2S3 nanowires was reported, and the nanowires were comprehensively characterized. The diameters of the nanowires are about 60 nm, and their lengths range from tens of microns to several millimeters. The structure of the nanowires was determined to be of the orthorhombic phase, the growth direction was along [001], and the growth mechanism was investigated based on extensive high-resolution transmission electron microscopy observations. Optical absorption experiments revealed that the Bi2S3 nanowires are narrow-band semiconductors with a band gap E(g) approximately 1.33 eV. Electrical transport measurements on individual nanowires gave a resistivity of about 1.2 ohms cm and an emission current of 3.5 microA at a bias field of 35 V/microm. This current corresponds to a current density of about 10(5) A/cm2, which makes the Bi2S3 nanowire a potential candidate for applications in field-emission electronic devices.