The oxygen evolution reaction (OER) electrocatalysts, which can keep active for a long time in acidic media, are of great significance to proton exchange membrane water electrolyzers. Here, Ru-Co₃O₄ electrocatalysts with transition metal oxide Co₃O₄ as matrix and the noble metal Ru as doping element have been prepared through an ion exchange–pyrolysis process mediated by metal-organic framework, in which Ru atoms occupy the octahedral sites of Co₃O₄. Experimental and theoretical studies show that introduced Ru atoms have a passivation effect on lattice oxygen. The strong coupling between Ru and O causes a negative shift in the energy position of the O p-band centers. Therefore, the bonding activity of oxygen in the adsorbed state to the lattice oxygen is greatly passivated during the OER process, thus improving the stability of matrix material. In addition, benefiting from the modulating effect of the introduced Ru atoms on the metal active sites, the thermodynamic and kinetic barriers have been significantly reduced, which greatly enhances both the catalytic stability and reaction efficiency of Co₃O₄.

CdSSe nanobelts (NBs) are synthesized by thermal evaporation and then characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), high-resolution electron microscopy (HRTEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), photoluminescence (PL), and cathodoluminescence (CL). It is found that the CdSSe NBs have a good morphology and microstructure without defects. CL is sensitive to the defects of CdSSe NBs; thus, we can select single nanobelt with homogeneous CL emission to prepare a detector. Based on it, the photodetector of single CdSSe NB was developed and its photoelectric properties were investigated in detail. It is found that under illumination of white light and at the bias voltage of 1 V, the photocurrent of a single CdSSe nanobelt device is 1.60 × 10−7 A, the dark current is 1.96 × 10−10 A, and the ratio of light current to dark one is 816. In addition, the CdSSe nanobelt detector has high photoelectric performance with spectral responsivity of 10.4 AW−1 and external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 19.1%. Its rise/decay time is about 1.62/4.70 ms. This work offers a novel strategy for design wavelength-controlled photodetectors by adjusting their compositions.

Graphene is one of the most promising spintronic materials due to its high carrier mobility. However, the absence of a band gap and ferromagnetic order in graphene seriously limit its applications in spintronics. How to utilize its high carrier mobility as well as mediate its electronic structure remains a challenge. Herein, we design a novel composite, which is composed of graphene and Mn-doped monolayer MoS ₂ . The magnetic properties and electronic structures of graphene/Mn-doped monolayer MoS ₂ heterostructures were studied by using density functional theory (DFT) with the van der Waals (vdW) correlations (DFT-D). We found that the heterostructures show increased magnetic moments and more stable ferromagnetic (FM) states compared with that of isolated Mn-doped MoS ₂ monolayer. Our further studies show that many electrons are transferred to Mn-doped MoS ₂ monolayer from graphene, which causes the Fermi level to shift down below the Dirac cone about 0.59 eV. The transfered electrons also enhance the FM coupling between Mn ions. Graphene is partially spin polarized because of the magnetic proximity effect, which leads to the spin-dependent gaps for spin-up (16.1 meV) and spin-down (5 meV) at Dirac point, respectively. The introduction of sulfur (S) vacancy to the interface results in a much more stable FM structure and a higher total magnetic moment of the FM state; furthermore, it raises the spin polarization of graphene π orbitals and opens up a small band gap of about 7 meV. These findings propose a new route to facilitate the design of spintronic devices which both need stable ferromagnetism and finite band gap.

The size and edge-dependence of two-photon absorption (TPA) for rectangular graphene quantum dots (GQDs) is investigated theoretically in the framework of Dirac equation under hard wall boundary conditions. The TPA cross section associated with interband transitions around K point is derived and the transition selection rules are obtained. Results reveal that when the size of zigzag-edge M = 3M₀ ± 1 (M₀ is an integer), the GQD exhibits a semiconductor while for M = 3M₀ it is metallic. For semiconducting rectangular GQDs, TPA is tuned by the sizes of both edges in GQDs and the armchair-edge dimension contributes more to TPA. While for metallic rectangular GQDs, zigzag-edge dimension affects TPA little and the position of absorption peak and the magnitude of the TPA coefficient are determined by the size of armchair-edge and the resonant enhancement occurs.

We investigate theoretically the two-photon absorption (TPA) for circular graphene quantum dots (GQDs) with the edge of armchair and zigzag on the basis of electronic energy states obtained by solving the Dirac-Weyl equation numerically under finite difference method. The expressions for TPA cross section are derived and the transition selection rules are obtained. Results reveal that the TPA is significantly greater in GQDs than conventional semiconductor QDs in infrared spectrum (2–6 um) with a resonant TPA cross section of up to 10¹¹GM. The TPA peaks are tuned by the GQDs’ size, edge and electron relaxation rate.

We investigate theoretically the impact of Rashba spin-orbit coupling (RSOC) effect to two-photon absorption (TPA) and its dependence on the polarization direction of the incident light in monolayer black phosphorus (BP) starting from an anisotropic two band k·p model. It is found that the TPA is enhanced several times by RSOC effect which is tuned by the external electric field. And the TPA response shows highly anisotropic, changing periodically with the polarization direction of incident linearly polarized light as the function of cos⁴θ approximatively. The TPA coefficient reaches its maximum when the polarization direction is aligned along the armchair direction (x-direction), while falls into its minimum along the zigzag direction (y-direction).