Unzipping of the basal plane offers a valuable pathway to uniquely control the material chemistry of 2D structures. Nonetheless, reliable unzipping has been reported only for graphene and phosphorene thus far. The single elemental nature of those materials allows a straightforward understanding of the chemical reaction and property modulation involved with such geometric transformations. Here we report spontaneous linear ordered unzipping of bi-elemental 2D MX2 transition metal chalcogenides as a general route to synthesize 1D nanoribbon structures. The strained metallic phase (1T′) of MX2 undergoes highly specific longitudinal unzipping owing to the self-linearized oxygenation at chalcogenides. Stable dispersions of 1T′ MoS2 nanoribbons with widths of 10–120 nm and lengths up to ~4 µm are produced in water. Edge abundant 1T′ MoS2 nanoribbons reveal the hidden potential of idealized electrocatalysis for hydrogen evolution reactions at a competitive level with the precious Pt catalyst.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

The photovoltaic performances of i- ZnO/CdS/Cu(In,Ga)Se 2 (CIGS) solar cell with different window architectures of SnO 2 :In 2 O 3 (ITO), Al 2 O 3 :ZnO (AZO) and ITO/AZO, were experimentally compared. The solar cell with ITO deposited directly on i-ZnO layer showed an abnormal current-voltage characteristic as having a shunt path. Both of AZO and ITO/AZO resulted in normal current-voltage behavior as far as AZO is contacting ZnO.

Nanoscale engineering of carbon materials is immensely demanded in various scientific areas. We present highly ordered nitrogendoped carbon nanowire arrays via block copolymer (BCP) self-assembly under an electric field. Large dielectric constant difference between distinct polymer blocks offers rapid alignment of PMMA-b-PAN self-assembled nanodomains under an electric field. Lithographic patterning of the graphene electrode as well as straightforward thermal carbonization of the PAN block creates well-aligned carbon nanowire device structures. Diverse carbon nanopatterns including radial and curved arrays can be readily assembled by the modification of electrode shapes. Our carbon nanopatterns bear a nitrogen content over 26%, highly desirable for NO 2 sensing, as the nitrogen element acts as adsorption sites for NO 2 molecules. Aligned carbon nanowire arrays exhibits a 6-fold enhancement of NO 2 sensitivity from a randomly aligned counterpart. Taking advantage of well-established benefits from deviceoriented BCP nanopatterning, our approach proposes a viable route to highly ordered carbon nanostructures compatible to next-generation device architectures.

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