Enhancing catalytic activity by decorating noble metals in catalysts provides an opportunity for promoting the electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) application. However, there are few systematic studies on regulating the structures of noble metals in catalytic materials and investigating their influence on HER. Herein, Pt catalysts with different structures including single atoms (SAs), clusters, and nanoparticles well-controllably anchored on VS2 nanosheets through a cost-effective optothermal method are reported, and their HER performance is studied. The most efficient Pt-decorated VS2 catalyst (with both Pt SAs and clusters) delivers an overpotential of 77 mV at 10 mA cm–2, close to that of Pt/C (48 mV). However, the optimal mass activity of Pt (normalizing to Pt content) is obtained from only SA Pt-decorated VS2 (i.e., 22.88 A mgPt –1 at 200 mV) and is 12 times greater than that of the Pt/C (1.87 A mgPt –1), attributed to the greatly enhanced Pt utilization. Additionally, the theoretical simulations reveal that Pt SA decoration makes the adsorption free energy of H* closer to the thermoneutral value and improves the charge-transfer kinetics, significantly enhancing HER activity. This work offers a pathway to prepare the desired catalyst based on synergy of Pt structures and VS2 and reveals the intrinsic mechanism for enhancing catalytic activity, which is important for HER applications.

Near infrared (NIR) photodetectors based on 2D materials are widely studied for their potential application in next generation sensing, thermal imaging, and optical communication. Construction of van der Waals (vdWs) heterostructure provides a tremendous degree of freedom to combine and extend the features of 2D materials, opening up new functionalities on photonic and optoelectronic devices. Herein, a type-II InSe/PdSe 2 vdWs heterostructure with strong interlayer transition for NIR photodetection is demonstrated. Strong interlayer transition between InSe and PdSe 2 is predicted via density functional theory calculation and confirmed by photoluminance spectroscopy and Kelvin probe force microscopy. The heterostructure exhibits highly sensitive photodetection in NIR region up to 1650 nm. The photoresponsivity, detectivity, and external quantum efficiency at this wavelength respectively reaches up to 58.8 A W −1 , 1 × 10 10 Jones, and 4660%. The results suggest that the construction of vdWs heterostructure with strong interlayer transition is a promising strategy for infrared photodetection, and this work paves the way to developing high-performance optoelectronic devices based on 2D vdWs heterostructures.

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Indium selenide (InSe) has become a research hotspot because of its favorable carrier mobility and thickness-tunable band gap, showing great application potential in high-performance optoelectronic devices. The trend of miniaturization in optoelectronics has forced the feature sizes of the electronic components to shrink accordingly. Therefore, atomically thin InSe crystals may play an important role in future optoelectronics. Given the instability and ultralow photoluminescent (PL) emission of mechanically exfoliated ultrathin InSe, synthesis of highly stable mono- and few-layer InSe nanosheets with high PL efficiency has become crucial. Herein, ultrathin InSe nanosheets were prepared via thermal annealing of electrochemically intercalated products from bulk InSe. The size and yield of the as-prepared nanosheets were up to ∼160 μm and ∼70%, respectively, and ∼80% of the nanosheets were less than five layer. Impressively, the as-prepared nanosheets showed greatly enhanced stability and PL emission because of surface modification by carbon species. Efficient photoresponsivity of 2 A/W was achieved in the as-prepared nanosheet-based devices. These nanosheets were further assembled into large-area thin films with photoresponsivity of 16 A/W and an average Hall mobility of about 5 cm2 V–1 s–1. Finally, one-dimensional (1D) InSe nanoscrolls with a length up to 90 μm were constructed by solvent-assisted self-assembly of the exfoliated nanosheets.

The coherent developments of high performance broadband photodetection and a discrimination technique are highly essential for multiscene imaging and optical communication applications. The integration of traditional bandpass filters or stacking other spectral absorber in photodetectors often complicates the device design and leads to asymmetric photogain for each waveband. Herein, we report on ultraviolet–visible (UV-vis) multispectral photodetection based on a single ZnO nanowire (NW) phototransistor, where defect reconstructions can be reliably induced by a two-step annealing that leads to the observed broadband photodetection. Electron paramagnetic resonance and photoluminescence spectra reveal the reconstructions of zinc-atom-related defects (i.e., zinc interstitials and vacancies). Combined microdifferential reflectance and multimode scanning probe microscope (SPM) technique confirm the presence of a unique visible-sensitive Zn-rich ZnO shell layer and a trap-free UV-sensitive ZnO core. We achieve not only an ultrahigh carrier mobility (212.4 cm2 V–1 s–1), but also a concurrent improvement for UV-vis photodetection with superior responsivities and detectivities on the orders of 105 AW–1 and 1015 Jones at 100 mV, respectively, and response speeds less than one second. Moreover, photocurrents under blue, green, and red stimuli can be selectively switched on/off by tuning the gate stress. These high performances in all figures of merit have opened new routes to tailor intrinsic properties of a single NW for optoelectronic applications.