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Photocatalytic hydrogen evolution from pure water is successfully realized by using interstitial P-doped CdS with rich S vacancies (CdS-P) as the photocatalyst in the absence of any electron sacrificial agents. Through interstitial P doping, the impurity level of S vacancies is located near the Fermi level and becomes an effective electron trap level in CdS-P, which can change dynamic properties of photogenerated electrons and thus prolong their lifetimes. The long-lived photogenerated electrons are able to reach the surface active sites to initiate an efficient photocatalytic redox reaction. Moreover, the photocatalytic activity of CdS-P can be further improved through the loading of CoP as a cocatalyst.

Photocatalytic hydrogen evolution from pure water is realized by CdS-P. Through interstitial P doping, the impurity level of S vacancies is located near the Fermi level and becomes an effective electron trap level, which can change the dynamics of photogenerated electrons. The long-lived photogenerated electrons can reach the surface active sites for initiating the photocatalytic reaction.

Vanadium dioxide/titanium nitride (VO₂/TiN) smart coatings are prepared by hybridizing thermochromic VO₂ with plasmonic TiN nanoparticles. The VO₂/TiN coatings can control infrared (IR) radiation dynamically in accordance with the ambient temperature and illumination intensity. It blocks IR light under strong illumination at 28 °C but is IR transparent under weak irradiation conditions or at a low temperature of 20 °C. The VO₂/TiN coatings exhibit a good integral visible transmittance of up to 51% and excellent IR switching efficiency of 48% at 2000 nm. These unique advantages make VO₂/TiN promising as smart energy-saving windows.

Thermochromic vanadium oxide (VO₂) film is coated on titanium nitrate (TiN) plasmonic nanoparticles to fabricate a hybrid VO₂/TiN smart coating. This novel coating can intelligently control the infrared (IR) radiation under room-temperature conditions by reflecting the IR radiation at a high temperature while allowing most of the radiation to go through at a low temperature.

The power conversion efficiency of perovskite solar cells (PSCs) has ascended from 3.8% to 22.1% in recent years. ZnO has been well-documented as an excellent electron-transport material. However, the poor chemical compatibility between ZnO and organo-metal halide perovskite makes it highly challenging to obtain highly efficient and stable PSCs using ZnO as the electron-transport layer. It is demonstrated in this work that the surface passivation of ZnO by a thin layer of MgO and protonated ethanolamine (EA) readily makes ZnO as a very promising electron-transporting material for creating hysteresis-free, efficient, and stable PSCs. Systematic studies in this work reveal several important roles of the modification: (i) MgO inhibits the interfacial charge recombination, and thus enhances cell performance and stability; (ii) the protonated EA promotes the effective electron transport from perovskite to ZnO, further fully eliminating PSCs hysteresis; (iii) the modification makes ZnO compatible with perovskite, nicely resolving the instability of ZnO/perovskite interface. With all these findings, PSCs with the best efficiency up to 21.1% and no hysteresis are successfully fabricated. PSCs stable in air for more than 300 h are achieved when graphene is used to further encapsulate the cells.

Surface passivation of ZnO by a thin layer of MgO and protonated ethanolamine readily makes ZnO a very promising electron-transporting material for creating efficient, hysteresis-free and stable perovskite solar cells (PSCs). PSCs, stable in air for more than 300 h, are achieved when graphene is used to encapsulate the cells.