Light scattering by small particles has a long and interesting history in physics. Nonetheless, it continues to surprise with new insights and applications. This includes new discoveries, such as novel plasmonic effects, as well as exciting theoretical and experimental developments such as optical trapping, anomalous light scattering, optical tweezers, nanospasers, and novel aspects and realizations of Fano resonances. These have led to important new applications, including several ones in the biomedical area and in sensing techniques at the single-molecule level. There are additionally many potential future applications in optical devices and solar energy technologies. Here we review the fundamental aspects of light scattering by small spherical particles, emphasizing the phenomenological treatments and new developments in this field.

The grand challenge in the development of atomically dispersed metallic catalysts is their low metal-atom loading density, uncontrollable localization and ambiguous interactions with supports, posing difficulty in maximizing their catalytic performance. Here, we achieve an interface catalyst consisting of atomic cobalt array covalently bound to distorted 1T MoS₂ nanosheets (SA Co-D 1T MoS₂). The phase of MoS₂ transforming from 2H to D-1T, induced by strain from lattice mismatch and formation of Co-S covalent bond between Co and MoS₂ during the assembly, is found to be essential to form the highly active single-atom array catalyst. SA Co-D 1T MoS₂ achieves Pt-like activity toward HER and high long-term stability. Active-site blocking experiment together with density functional theory (DFT) calculations reveal that the superior catalytic behaviour is associated with an ensemble effect via the synergy of Co adatom and S of the D-1T MoS₂ support by tuning hydrogen binding mode at the interface.

The formation of lithium dendrites induces the notorious safety issue and poor cycling life of energy storage devices, such as lithium–sulfur and lithium–air batteries. We propose a surface energy model to describe the complex interface between the lithium anode and electrolyte. A universal strategy of hindering formation of lithium dendrites via tuning surface energy of the relevant thin film growth is suggested. The merit of the novel motif lies not only fundamentally a perfect correlation between electrochemistry and thin film fields, but also significantly promotes larger‐scale application of lithium–sulfur and lithium–air batteries, as well as other metal batteries (e.g., Zn, Na, K, Cu, Ag, and Sn).