Ammonia-borane (AB) is a promising chemical hydrogen-storage material. However, the development of real-time, efficient, controllable, and safe methods for hydrogen release under mild conditions is a challenge in the large-scale use of hydrogen as a long-term solution for future energy security. A new class of low-cost catalytic system is presented that uses nanostructured Ni2 P as catalyst, which exhibits excellent catalytic activity and high sustainability toward hydrolysis of ammonia-borane with the initial turnover frequency of 40.4 mol(H2)  mol(Ni2P) (-1)  min(-1) under air atmosphere and at ambient temperature. This value is higher than those reported for noble-metal-free catalysts, and the obtained Arrhenius activation energy (Ea =44.6 kJ mol(-1) ) for the hydrolysis reaction is comparable to Ru-based bimetallic catalysts. A clearly mechanistic analysis of the hydrolytic reaction of AB based on experimental results and a density functional theory calculation is presented.

Epitaxial self-assembled silicide nanowires can be grown on Si (001) if the magnitude of the lattice mismatch between epilayer and substrate is large along one crystal axis and small along the perpendicular axis. This phenomenon is illustrated with four examples: ScSi2, ErSi2, DySi2, and GdSi2, which have lattice mismatches of −4.6%, 6.3%, 7.6%, and 8.9%, respectively, along one of the Si 〈110〉 directions and mismatches of 0.8%, −1.6%, −0.1%, and 0.8%, respectively, along the perpendicular Si〈110〉 direction. The resulting self-assembled nanowires have widths and heights in the range of 3–11 and 0.2–3 nm, depending on the lattice mismatches. The average lengths of the nanowires are in the range 150–450 nm, and are determined primarily by kinetic issues. The epitaxial growth of silicide nanowires should prove interesting to those studying quasi-one- dimensional systems.

The development of low-cost and highly active electrocatalysts for two half reactions: H2 and O2 evolution reactions (HER and OER), is still a huge challenge to realize water splitting. Herein, we report that CoP nanoparticles (NPs) can act as a bifunctional catalyst for both HER and OER. Particularly, ultrafine CoP NPs decorated on N-doped multiwalled carbon nanotube (MWCNT) exhibit remarkable catalytic performance for OER in 0.1 M NaOH aqueous solution, with a low onset overpotential of 290 mV, a Tafel slope of 50 mV dec(-1), an overpotential (η) of 330 mV at 10 mA cm(-2), and approximately 100% Faradaic efficiency, paralleling the performance of state-of-the-art Co-based OER catalysts including Co3O4, CoSe2, and Co-Pi. The hybrid catalyst is capable of maintaining a high catalytic current density for at least 10 h without any loss of catalytic activity. Meanwhile, the noble-metal-free catalyst also shows good activity and duarability for HER under the same basic condition.