Unassisted overall water splitting with a solar-to-hydrogen efficiency of over 10% by coupled lead halide perovskite photoelectrodes

Hydrogen is a promising future sustainable fuel candidate with boundless opportunities.Research into photoelectrochemical(PEC)water splitting based on a lead halide perovskite(LHP)has progressed significantly with the aim of more efficient solar hydrogen production.Herein,we unite a well-known photo-absorbing LHP with cost-effective water-splitting catalysts,and we introduce two types of monolithic LHP-based PEC devices that act as a photocathode and a photoanode for the hydrogen evolution reaction and oxygen evolution reaction,leading to efficient unbiased overall water splitting.Through the integration of these two monolithic LHP-based photoelectrodes,an unbiased solar-to-hydrogen conversion efficiency of 10.64%and a photocurrent density of 8.65 mA cm^(−2) are achieved.

Fundamental principles and development of proximity-field nanopatterning toward advanced 3D nanofabrication

Three-dimensional(3D)nanoarchitectures have offered unprecedented material performances in diverse applications like energy storages,catalysts,electronic,mechanical,and photonic devices.These outstanding performances are attributed to unusual material properties at the nanoscale,enormous surface areas,a geometrical uniqueness,and comparable feature sizes with optical wavelengths.For the practical use of the unusual nanoscale properties,there have been developments for macroscale fabrications of the 3D nanoarchitectures with process areas over centimeter scales.Among the many fabrication methods for 3D structures at the nanoscale,proximity-field nanopatterning(PnP)is one of the promising techniques that generates 3D optical holographic images and transforms them into material structures through a lithographic process.Using conformal and transparent phase masks as a key factor,the PnP process has advantages in terms of stability,uniformity,and reproducibility for 3D nanostructures with periods from 300 nm to several micrometers.Other merits of realizing precise 3D features with sub-100 nm and rapid processes are attributed to the interference of coherent light diffracted by phase masks.In this review,to report the overall progress of PnP from 2003,we present a comprehensive understanding of PnP,including its brief history,the fundamental principles,symmetry control of 3D nanoarchitectures,material issues for the phase masks,and the process area expansion to the wafer-scale for the target applications.Finally,technical challenges and prospects are discussed for further development and practical applications of the PnP technique.