Oxidized Pt clusters on a TiO ₂ support as a robust electrocatalyst for the hydrogen evolution reaction.

Electrocatalytic CO₂ reduction reaction (CO₂RR) is one of the most effective methods to convert CO₂ into useful fuels. Introducing defects into metal nanostructures can effectively improve the catalytic activity and selectivity towards CO₂RR. This review provides the recent progress on the use of metal nanomaterials with defects towards electrochemical CO₂RR and defects engineering methods. Accompanying these ideas, we introduce the structure of defects characterized by electron microscopy techniques as the characterization and analysis of defects are relatively difficult. Subsequently, we present the intrinsic mechanism of how the defects affect CO₂RR performance. Finally, to promote a wide and deep study in this field, the perspectives and challenges concerning defects engineering in metal nanomaterials towards CO₂RR are put forward.

With more and more applications, the mechanical strength of graphene paper (GP) has attracted significant attention in recent years. In this report, GPs were prepared by flow-induced filtration of electrochemical exfoliated graphene sheets. By adjusting the concentration of solution, we found graphene sheets fabricated in 0.1 M K₂SO₄ have the thinnest average thickness. And by uniaxial in-plane tensile tests operated on a self-developed in situ scanning electron microscopy (SEM) tensile stage, the corresponding GP has the best fracture strength of 192 MPa. This is due to that the thickness decrease of exfoliated graphene will increase the quantity of interlayer crosslinks, thus improving the mechanical properties of GPs. This research may open a new way to obtain high-strength GPs for applications.