p-type ternary oxides can be extensively explored as alternative sensing channels to binary oxides with diverse structural and compositional versatilities. Seeking a novel approach to magnify their sensitivities toward gas molecules, e.g., volatile organic compounds (VOCs), will definitely expand their applications in the frontier area of healthcare and air-quality monitoring. In this work, delafossite CuCrO (CCO) nanoparticles with different grain sizes have been utilized as p-type ternary oxide sensors. It was found that singly ionized oxygen vacancies (V) defects, compared with the grain size of CCO nanoparticles, play an important role in enhancing the charge exchange at the VOCs molecules/CCO interface. In addition to suppressing the hole concentration of the sensor channel, the unpaired electron trapped in V provides an active site for chemisorptions of environmental oxygen and VOCs molecules. The synergetic effect is responsible for the observed increase of sensitivity. Furthermore, the sensitive (V defect-rich) CCO sensor exhibits good reproducibility and stability under a moderate operation temperature (<325 °C). Our work highlights that V defects, created via either in situ synthesis or postannealing treatment, could be explored to rationally boost the performance of p-type ternary oxide sensors.

Transparent conducting CuCrO2 thin films were prepared by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) from a nanocrystalline CuCrO2 target. The derived CuCrO2 films were highly c-axis oriented deposited at 800 K. The microstructural, electrical as well as optical properties were studied. It was found that the films were relatively smooth and behaved as semiconductors. The energy band of the CuCrO2 films is constructed based on the Mott–Davis model in order to investigate the conduction mechanism. The transmittances of the films in the visible region are about 60–80% with direct band gaps of about 3.2 eV. The results suggested that CuCrO2 films could be successfully prepared by the PLD method, which can broaden the applications of the transparent conducting oxide films.

The role of remnant PbI2 in CH3NH3PbI3 films is still controversial, some investigations have revealed that the remnant PbI2 plays a passivation role, reduces the charge recombination in perovskite solar cells (PSCs), and improves the performance of PSCs, but the opposing views state that remnant PbI2 has no passivation effect and it would deteriorate the stability of the devices. In our investigation, the CH3NH3PbI3 films have been prepared by a two-step spin-coating method and the content of the remnant PbI2 in CH3NH3PbI3 films has been tuned by varying the preparation temperature. It has been found that increasing the heating temperature could increase the coverage of spin-coated PbI2 films, which has led to high coverage CH3NH3PbI3 films and more remnant PbI2 in CH3NH3PbI3 films, and as a result, the performance of PSCs was enhanced obviously and the maximum power conversion efficiency of 14.32 ± 0.28% was achieved by the PSCs prepared at 130/120 °C (PbI2 films were heated at 130 °C and CH3NH3PbI3 films were heated at 120 °C). Furthermore, the dark current, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and time-resolved fluorescence emission decay measurements revealed that the charge recombination in PSCs has been gradually suppressed and the fluorescence emission lifetime has gradually increased with the content of remnant PbI2 increasing. Thus, the passivation effects of the unreacted and decomposed PbI2 in improving the performance of PSCs have been confirmed unquestionably.