Low efficiency and poor stability are two major challenges we encounter in the exploration of non-noble metal electrocatalysts for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in both acidic and alkaline environment. Herein, the hybrid of cobalt encapsulated by N, B codoped ultrathin carbon cages (Co@BCN) is first introduced as a highly active and durable nonprecious metal electrocatalysts for HER, which is constructed by a bottom-up approach using metal organic frameworks (MOFs) as precursor and self-sacrificing template. The optimized catalyst exhibited remarkable electrocatalytic performance for hydrogen production from both both acidic and alkaline media. Stability investigation reveals the overcoating of carbon cages can effectively avoid the corrosion and oxidation of the catalyst under extreme acidic and alkaline environment. Electrochemical active surface area (EASA) evaluation and density functional theory (DFT) calculations revealed that the synergetic effect between the encapsulated cobalt nanoparticle and the N, B codoped carbon shell played the fundamental role in the superior HER catalytic performance.

Potassium fluoroboratoberyllate KBe2BO3F2 (KBBF) has been revealed theoretically and experimentally as a novel ultraviolet nonlinear optical crystal, but it is found to be very difficult to grow in a large size, because of the weak binding interaction between the (Be2BO3)∞ units, which leads to an apparent layer habit in the growth. By using a molecular engineering approach, oxygen bridges when brought in to strengthen the binding between the infinite units are found to be useful to overcome the above shortcoming of KBBF, and in the light of it another new ultraviolet nonlinear optical crystal—strontium boratoberyllate Sr2Be2B2O7 (SBBO) has been discovered. The linear optical properties of SBBO are similar to KBBF’s, but its nonlinear optical properties are better than that of the latter. d22(SBBO)≂d22(β-BaB2O4), which is two times higher than d11 of KBBF. SBBO has very good mechanical properties, and it is also not deliquescent. So SBBO is expected to have great potential for the application in ultraviolet nonlinear optical devices.

The geometries, electronic structures, and magnetic properties of H-, B-, C-, N-, O-, and F-absorbed MoS2 monolayers have been investigated by first-principles calculations. The results demonstrate that all these atoms can chemically absorb on MoS2 monolayer. The total magnetic moments of H-, B-, C-, N-, and F-absorbed MoS2 monolayers are 1.0, 1.0, 2.0, 1.0, and 1.0 μB, respectively. The large spatial extensions of spin density and long-range antiferromagnetic coupling were observed in H- and F-absorbed MoS2 monolayers. Additionally, the n-type and p-type two-dimensional MoS2 semiconductors can be realized by absorbing H and N atoms, respectively.