This review summarizes recent progress in layered double hydroxide oxygen evolution reaction electrocatalysts including design strategies, key issues and future prospects.

Controlled synthesis of lead halide perovskite (LHP) nanostructures not only benefits fundamental research but also offers promise for applications. Among many synthesis techniques, although catalytic vapor–liquid–solid (VLS) growth is recognized as an effective route to achieve high-quality nanostructures, until now, there is no detailed report on VLS grown LHP nanomaterials due to the emerging challenges in perovskite synthesis. Here, we develop a direct VLS growth for single-crystalline all-inorganic lead halide perovskite (i.e., CsPbX3; X = Cl, Br, or I) nanowires (NWs). These NWs exhibit high-performance photodetection with the responsivity exceeding 4489 A/W and detectivity over 7.9 × 1012 Jones toward the visible light regime. Field-effect transistors (FET) based on individual CsPbX3 NWs are also fabricated, where they show the superior hole mobility of up to 3.05 cm2/(V s), higher than other all-inorganic LHP devices. This work provides important guidelines for the further improvement of these perovskite nanostructures for utilizations.

Because of sluggish kinetics of the oxygen evolution reaction (OER), designing low-cost, highly active, and stable electrocatalysts for OER is important for the development of sustainable electrochemical water splitting. Here, {112} high-index facet exposed porous CoO nanosheets with oxygen vacancies on the surface have been successfully synthesized via a simple hydrothermal method followed by NaBH reduction. As compared with the pristine and other faceted porous CoO nanosheets (e.g., {110} and {111}), the as-prepared {112} faceted porous nanosheets exhibit a much lower overpotential of 318 mV at a current density of 10 mA cm. Importantly, these nanosheets also give excellent electrochemical stability, displaying an insignificant change in the required overpotential at a current density of 10 mA cm even after a 14 h long-term chronoamperometric test. All these superior OER activity and stability could be attributed to their unique hierarchical structures assembled by ultrathin porous nanosheets, {112} high-index exposed facets with higher ratio of Co/Co and oxygen vacancies on the surface, which can substantially enhance the charge transfer rate and increase the number of active sites. All these findings not only demonstrate the potency of our CoO nanosheets for efficient water oxidation but also provide further insights into developing cost-effective and high-performance catalysts for electrochemical applications.

Meticulously designed 3D porous core–shell Ni nanochains@NiFe LDH nanosheets bifunctional electrocatalysts outperform the state-of-the-art IrO2 (+)//Pt/C (−) electrodes and most of the reported LDH electrocatalysts for overall water splitting.