2024 New's Items

The discovery of mechanically soft solid-state materials with fast Mg-ion conduction is crucial for the development of solid-state magnesium batteries. In this paper, novel magnesium gallium halide compounds are reported that achieve high ionic conductivity of 0.47 mS cm−1 at room temperature. These Mg-ion conductors obtained by ball milling Mg and Ga salts exhibit clay-like mechanical properties, enabling intimate contact at the electrode–electrolyte interface during battery cycling. With a combination of experimental and computational analysis, this study identifies that the...

Cobalt is an efficient catalyst for Fischer−Tropsch synthesis (FTS) of hydrocarbons from syngas (CO + H2) with enhanced selectivity for long-chain hydrocarbons when promoted by Manganese. However, the molecular scale origin of the enhancement remains unclear. Here we present an experimental and theoretical study using model catalysts consisting of crystalline CoMnOx nanoparticles and thin films, where Co and Mn are mixed at the sub-nm scale. Employing TEM and in-situ X-ray spectroscopies (XRD, APXPS, and XAS), we determine the catalyst’s atomic structure, chemical...

Nanowires have emerged as an important family of one-dimensional (1D) nanomaterials owing to their exceptional optical, electrical, and chemical properties. In particular, Cu nanowires (NWs) show promising applications in catalyzing the challenging electrochemical CO2 reduction reaction (CO2RR) to valuable chemical fuels. Despite early reports showing morphological changes of Cu NWs after CO2RR processes, their structural evolution and the resulting exact nature of active Cu sites remain largely elusive, which calls for the development of multimodal operando time-resolved nm-scale methods...

The development of large-scale, high-quality ferroelectric semiconductor nanowire arrays with interesting light-emitting properties can address limitations in traditional wide-bandgap ferroelectrics, thus serving as building blocks for innovative device architectures and next-generation high-density optoelectronics. Here, we investigate the optical properties of ferroelectric CsGeX3 (X = Br, I) halide perovskite nanowires that are epitaxially grown on muscovite mica substrates by vapor phase deposition. Detailed structural characterizations reveal an incommensurate heteroepitaxial...