Photo-electro-integrated activation over LDH catalysts was demonstrated as an effective strategy to boost OER activity with free solar energy.

Semiconductor heterostructures are regarded as an efficient way to improve the photocurrent in photoelectrochemical cell-type (PEC) photodetectors. To better utilize solar energy, TiO 2 @Sn 3 O 4 arrays vertically aligned on carbon fiber papers were synthesized via a hydrothermal route with a two-step method and used as photoanodes in a self-powered photoelectrochemical cell-type (PEC) photodetector under visible light. TiO 2 @Sn 3 O 4 heterostructures exhibit a stable photocurrent of 180 mA, which is a 4-fold increase with respect to that of the Sn 3 O 4 nanoflakes on carbon paper, and a two-order increase with respect to that of the TiO 2 NRs arrays. The evolution of hydrogen according to the photo-catalytic watersplitting process showed that Sn 3 O 4 /TiO 2 heterostructures have a good photocatalytic hydrogen evolution activity with the rate of 5.23 mmol h À1 , which is significantly larger than that of Sn 3 O 4 nanoflakes (0.40 mmol h À1 ) and TiO 2 nanorods (1.13 mmol h À1 ). Furthermore, the mechanism behind this was discussed. The detector has reproducible and flexible properties, as well as an enhanced photosensitive performance.

Beam engineering is one of the most important functionalities in light detection and ranging (LiDAR). In this work, a silicon optical phased array (OPA) is employed to control the beam profile. Machine-learning-based genetic algorithm optimization is utilized to suppress the sidelobes of the far field pattern assuming the random distribution of aperiodic arrays. The optimized mainlobe position versus wavelength relationship in two-dimensional aperiodic arrays is distinctly different from prior works. Analysis was performed to show the effect of fabrication error of arrays on the side mode suppression ratio. Our study provides an effective pathway to optimize the random distributed OPAs within a controllable time frame among the vast number of parameters.