The technological evolution has been progressing for centuries and will possibly increase at a higher rate in the 21st century. Currently, in this age of nanotechnology, the discovery of more economical and sustainable novel materials has considerably increased. The abundance of two-dimensional (2D) materials has endowed them with a broad material platform in technical studies and in the expansion of nano- and atomic-level applications. The innovation of graphene has motivated considerable attention to the study of other novel 2D materials, known as modern day “alchemy”, by which scientists are trying to convert most possible periodic table elements into 2D material structures and forms. 2D material devices with high quality and good optical encoder performance have a multitude of industrial applications. However, their stability and large size restrict their applications, but these problems can be overcome by functionalization and substrate-based formation of 2D materials. Therefore, via this review, first, basic attributes of 2D materials are described, and the mechanisms to further enhance their properties are also summarized. Second, the applications of 2D materials are discussed, along with their advantages and disadvantages. Finally, some effective device-fabrication approaches, such as heterostructure approaches, are applied to further enhance the properties of 2D materials; their novel device applications and opportunities are also presented. This updated review may provide new avenues for 2D material synthesis and development of more efficient devices compared to conventional devices in different fields.

Two-dimensional (2D) materials have a wide platform in research and expanding nano- and atomic-level applications. This study is motivated by the well-established 2D catalysts, which demonstrate high efficiency, selectivity and sustainability exceeding that of classical noble metal catalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), oxygen evolution reaction (OER), and/or hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Nowadays, the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in water electrolysis is crucial for the cost-efficient production of a pure hydrogen fuel. We will also discuss another important point related to electrochemical carbon dioxide and nitrogen reduction (ECR and N₂RR) in detail. In this review, we mainly focused on the recent progress in the fuel cell technology based on 2D materials, including graphene, transition metal dichalcogenides, black phosphorus, MXenes, metal–organic frameworks, and metal oxide nanosheets. First, the basic attributes of the 2D materials were described, and their fuel cell mechanisms were also summarized. Finally, some effective methods for enhancing the performance of the fuel cells based on 2D materials were also discussed, and the opportunities and challenges of 2D material-based fuel cells at the commercial level were also provided. This review can provide new avenues for 2D materials with properties suitable for fuel cell technology development and related fields.

Midinfrared devices based on metalenses are of great utility for numerous applications, including free-space communication, imaging, and molecule sensing. However, because of the intrinsic dispersion of their building bricks, metalenses significantly suffer from large chromatic aberration. In this paper, we propose an achromatic metalens that can operate over a broad band of wavelengths in the infrared region from 3.7 to 4.5 $\mu \mathrm{m}$ for circularly polarized incidences. The Pancharatnam-Berry phase and the propagation phase are used to control the wavefront of light and eliminate the chromatic aberration, respectively. As a proof-of-principle demonstration, we numerically study two devices: an achromatic focusing lens and a beam deflector. The simulation results demonstrate the devices have a focusing efficiency of about $20.7\mathrm{\%}$ in the infrared region from 3.7 to 4.5 $\mu \mathrm{m}$. Our proposed approach may pave the way toward practical application of midinfrared devices.

The successful photo-catalyst library gives significant information on feature that affects photo-catalytic performance and proposes new materials. Competency is considerably significant to form multi-functional photo-catalysts with flexible characteristics. Since recently, two-dimensional materials (2DMs) gained much attention from researchers, due to their unique thickness-dependent uses, mainly for photo-catalytic, outstanding chemical and physical properties. Photo-catalytic water splitting and hydrogen (H₂) evolution by plentiful compounds as electron (e⁻) donors is estimated to participate in constructing clean method for solar H₂-formation. Heterogeneous photo-catalysis received much research attention caused by their applications to tackle numerous energy and environmental issues. This broad review explains progress regarding 2DMs, significance in structure, and catalytic results. We will discuss in detail current progresses of approaches for adjusting 2DMs-based photo-catalysts to assess their photo-activity including doping, hetero-structure scheme, and functional formation assembly. Suggested plans, e.g., doping and sensitization of semiconducting 2DMs, increasing electrical conductance, improving catalytic active sites, strengthening interface coupling in semiconductors (SCs) 2DMs, forming nano-structures, building multi-junction nano-composites, increasing photo-stability of SCs, and using combined results of adapted approaches, are summed up. Hence, to further improve 2DMs photo-catalyst properties, hetero-structure design-based 2DMs’ photo-catalyst basic mechanism is also reviewed.

Thermal radiation control has attracted increasing attention in a wide range of field, including infrared detection, radiative cooling, thermal management, and thermal camouflage. Previously reported thermal emitters for thermal camouflage presented disadvantages of lacking either tunability or thermal stability. In this paper, we propose a tunable thermal emitter consisting of metal-insulator-metal (MIM) plasmonic metamaterial based on phase-change material Ge₂Sb₂Te₅ (GST) to realize tunable control of thermal radiation in wavelength ranges from 3 μm to 14 μm. Meanwhile, the proposed thermal emitter possesses near unity emissivity at the wavelength of 6.3 μm to increase radiation heat dissipation, maintaining the thermal stability of the system. The underlying mechanism relies on fundamental magnetic resonance and the interaction between the high-order magnetic resonance and anti-reflection resonance. When the environmental background is blackbody, the tunable emitter maintains signal reduction rates greater than 80% in middle-IR and longer-IR regions from 450 K to 800 K and from room temperature to 800 K, respectively. The dependences of thermal camouflage on crystallization fraction of GST, incident angles and polarization angles have been investigated in detail. In addition, the thermal emitter can continuously realize thermal camouflage for various background temperatures and environmental background in atmospheric window in the range of 3–5 μm.

A novel multi-focusing metalens in the longitudinal direction has been proposed and investigated based on the equal optical path principle, which is independent on the incident polarizations and can be suitable for both of the linear and circular polarization incidences simultaneously. Here, three novel designing principles: partitioned mode, radial alternating mode and angular alternating mode, have been proposed firstly for constructing different types of the longitudinal multi-focusing metalenses. The performances of the designed metalenses based on the different designed methods have also been analyzed and investigated in detail, and the intensity ratio of the focusing spots can be tuned easily by modulating the numbers of the relative type of nanoantennas, which is significant for the micro-manipulating optics and the multi-imaging technology in the integrated optics.