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The effect of La‐deficiency and Ce/Sr‐substitution in the benchmark LaCo0.8Fe0.2O3 has been investigated for the decomposition of N2O between 500 and 900 °C. Real inlet gas composition and space velocity reveal that La‐deficiency and Ce/Sr‐substitution can improve the thermal stability of catalyst, while La1‐xSrxCo0.8Fe0.2O3 with x≥0.1 was highlighted as a promising formula due to the strongest resistance to deactivation and suppressed undesired NOx decomposition at high space velocity. This phenomenon is mainly ascribed to the incorporation of Sr2+ into the perovskite lattice during the reaction consequently stabilizing the Co3+ species and creating the oxygen vacancies in La1‐xSrxCoO3‐δ. On the contrary, the loss of activity on Ce‐substituted LaCo0.8Fe0.2O3 has been preferentially related to the cobalt exsolution to extra framework of perovskite making the catalytic cycle with Co3+ unfavorable. All these bulk and surface changes are accompanied with opposite evolution of apparent activation energy and pre‐exponential factor which can be discussed based on a redox mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Substitutional lanthanide doping of 2D transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) is expected to be a promising strategy to engineer optical, electronic, and optoelectronic properties of TMDs. Understanding the interactions between lanthanide dopants and 2D TMDs host is one of the key problems to be resolved for their profound research studies. Herein, the interactions between Ce dopants and monolayer WS2 in a physical vapor deposition grown Ce‐doped WS2 monolayer are studied by combining scanning tunneling microscopy with optical characterizations with high spatial and temporal resolution. It is found that the highly anisotropic crystal field can effectively split the energy levels of the Ce dopants' f orbital. The electrons in the split energy levels can bind the holes in the valence band maximum of the Ce‐doped WS2, forming optical bright excitons. These excitons collide with the free A excitons when increasing the pump fluences, reducing the A exciton's lifetime. This study may be beneficial for the design and fabrication of optical, electronic, and optoelectronic devices based on lanthanide‐doped TMDs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Upconversion materials have attracted much attention because of their broad application prospects in biomedicine and energy. Although various methods have been tried in nanoparticles and nanocrystals, it is still a challenge to realize monochromatic upconversion luminescence (UCL) in traditional lanthanide-doped materials. Two-dimensional transition metal chalcogenides (2D-TMDs) are a class of excellent luminescent semiconductors, offering a promising platform due to their chemical accessibility and physical sensitivity. However, multi-lanthanide doping, typically boosting the upconversion efficiency, has not been accomplished in monolayer TMD nanosheets. In this work, an optimized liquid precursor-assisted technique is designed to synthesize monolayer MoS2 nanosheets embedded with Er/Yb and Er/Ho by surmounting the precipitation of Ln3+-doped precursors, which is confirmed by structural characterization. The monolayer MoS2 can split the 4f configuration remarkably to produce diverse energy levels due to its strong Coulomb binding and spin–orbit coupling, as well as the unique asymmetric crystal field along the [001] direction. Hence, multiband monochromatic UCL from violet to near-infrared ranges was obtained on these codoped MoS2 nanosheets. This work provides an effective way to tune the luminescence performance and wavelength of 2D-TMD nanosheets as well as a strategy for the design of UCL nanomaterials for light applications as nanophotonic devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

1T-TaS2 has attracted much attention recently due to its abundant charge density wave phases. In this work, high-quality two-dimensional 1T-TaS2 crystals were successfully synthesized by a chemical vapor deposition method with controllable layer numbers, confirmed by the structural characterization. Based on the as-grown samples, their thickness-dependency nearly commensurate charge density wave/commensurate charge density wave phase transitions was revealed by the combination of the temperature-dependent resistance measurements and Raman spectra. The phase transition temperature increased with increasing thickness, but no apparent phase transition was found on the 2~3 nm thick crystals from temperature-dependent Raman spectra. The transition hysteresis loops due to temperature-dependent resistance changes of 1T-TaS2 can be used for memory devices and oscillators, making 1T-TaS2 a promising material for various electronic applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]