In the synthesis of inorganic materials, reactions often yield non-equilibrium kinetic byproducts instead of the thermodynamic equilibrium phase. Understanding the competition between thermodynamics and kinetics is a fundamental step towards the rational synthesis of target materials. Here, we use in situ synchrotron X-ray diffraction to investigat...
Nematic order is the breaking of rotational symmetry in the presence of translational invariance. While originally defined in the context of liquid crystals, the concept of nematic order has arisen in crystalline matter with discrete rotational symmetry, most prominently in the tetragonal Fe-based superconductors where the parent state is four-fold...
The thin-film rotating disk electrode (TF-RDE) is a well-developed, conventional ex-situ electrochemical method which is limited by poor mass transport in the dissolved phase and hence can only measure the kinetic response for Pt-based catalysts in a narrow overpotential range. Thus, the applicability of TF-RDE results in assessing how catalysts pe...
The effect of doping Cr on the electrocatalytic activity of supported Co2P for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in alkaline solution was investigated. A beneficial improvement in the performance of Co2P supported on carbon black (CrxCo2-xP/CB) towards HER and OER was discovered. For the HER at -200 mV overpo...
Biological environments use ions in charge transport for information transmission. The properties of mixed electronic and ionic conductivity in organic materials make them ideal candidates to transduce physiological information into electronically processable signals. A device proven to be highly successful in measuring such information is the orga...
Liquid cell transmission electron microscopy (TEM) enables the direct observation of dynamic physical and chemical processes in liquids at the nanoscale. Quantitative investigations into reactions with fast kinetics and/or multiple reagents will benefit from further advances in liquid cell design that facilitate rapid in situ mixing and precise con...
Recent advances in non-fullerene acceptors (NFAs) have resulted in significant improvement in the power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) of organic solar cells (OSCs). In our efforts to boost open-circuit voltage (VOC) for OSCs, the molecular design employing thiobarbituric acid (TBTA) end groups and an indacenodithieno[3,2-b]thiophene (IDTT) core gi...
© 2020, Tsinghua University Press and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature. Multimetallic nanowires with long-range atomic ordering hold the promise of unique physicochemical properties in many applications. Here we demonstrate the synthesis and study the stability of Cu3Au intermetallic nanowires. The synthesis is achieved by usin...
Free-standing ultrathin (∼2 nm) films of several oxides (Al2O3,TiO2, and others) have been developed, which are mechanically robust and transparent to electrons with Ekin ≥ 200 eV and to photons. We demonstrate their applicability in environmental X-ray photoelectron and infrared spectroscopy for molecular level studies of solid-gas (≥1 bar) and so...
Lead-free double perovskites have great potential as stable and nontoxic optoelectronic materials. Recently, Cs2 AgBiBr6 has emerged as a promising material, with suboptimal photon-to-charge carrier conversion efficiency, yet well suited for high-energy photon-detection applications. Here, the optoelectronic and structural properties of pure Cs2 Ag...
