Search

The energy disorders in the lateral direction of the junction in large-area photovoltaic modules are largely overlooked. Here, authors employ organic amidinium passivators to suppress the micro-inhomogeneity in the lateral energy landscapes and achieve high performance stable perovskite solar cells.

The power conversion efficiencies of thick-film perovskite solar cells lag behind those with nanometre film thickness. Here, the authors rule out the restrictions of carrier lifetime on device performance and reveal the critical role of lattice strain in micron-scale thick perovskite films.

Kinetic Wulff-shaped heteroepitaxial growth in halide perovskites enables the realization of well-defined 2D halide perovskite epitaxial heterostructures with deterministic slab thickness (n = 1–3) and high phase purity. Optoelectronic devices based on these heterostructures demonstrate substantial rectification ratios and reliable switching behaviours under optical or electrical inputs.

A non-destructive soft-lock drawing method can achieve carbon nanotube arrays with ultraclean surfaces and a very high degree of alignment. Such arrays could be used as nano-sized electrical contacts of high-density monolayer MoS₂ transistors.

The realization of atomically flat vertical 2D perovskite heterojunctions offers a novel materials platform that reveals the mechanism of anionic diffusion in 2D perovskites.

Electronic band topology may be leveraged to enhance nonlinear optical properties in monolayer semiconductors. Here, the authors report giant room-temperature nonlinearity enhancements in Janus transition metal dichalcogenides.

An epitaxial growth strategy that improves the stability of two-dimensional halide perovskites by inhibiting ion diffusion in their heterostructures using rigid π-conjugated ligands is demonstrated, and shows near-atomically sharp interfaces.

Two-dimensional hybrid perovskites are promising excitonic materials; however, there currently lacks understanding on exciton diffusion and annihilation. Here Deng et al. employ transient absorption microscopy to disentangle quantum-well-thickness-dependent exciton transport and annihilation in these materials.

Combining spin-resolved ultrafast spectroscopy and calculations, Zhou et al. report weak exciton-phonon interactions in 2D tin iodide perovskites, alleviating excited state polaronic screening effect and robust excitons, comparing to their lead counterparts.

Two-dimensional hybrid perovskites have gained substantial interest recently due to their controllable optoelectronic properties; however precise control over layer thickness has been synthetically challenging. Now a crystal growth method is shown to achieve high-quality single crystals of organic semiconductor-incorporated perovskites with control over their thickness and length through judicious solvent choice, affording precisely tuned optoelectronic properties.

The performance of supported metal nanoparticle catalysts can be tailored by metal-support interactions, but their use in catalyst design is still challenging. Here, the authors develop two-dimensional transition metal carbides as platforms for designing intermetallic compound catalysts that are efficient for light alkane dehydrogenations.

Reactive metal–support interactions can tune the activity of heterogeneous catalysts, but have mainly been reported for oxide supports. Now, the metal–support interaction of platinum with MXenes at moderate temperature is reported, using the water-gas shift reaction as an example to showcase the properties of a representative catalyst.

A solution-processing step has been used to prepare quantum-well structures that comprise a thin layer of perovskite sandwiched between two layers of conjugated oligothiophene derivatives. The band gap of the resulting 2D hybrid perovskites can be fine-tuned by functionalizing the organic component, which also improves the stability of the system.