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Nanotechnology is considered as an emerging effective means to augment plant photosynthesis. However, there is still a lot of work to be done in this field. Here, we applied the upconversion nanoparticles (UCNPs) on lettuce leaves and found that the UCNPs were able to transport into the lettuce body and colocalize with the chloroplasts. It was proved that UCNPs could harvest the near-infrared light of sunlight and increase the electron transfer rate in the photosynthesis process, thus increasing the photosynthesis rate. The gene expression analysis showed that more than 90% of gene expression in photosynthesis was upregulated. After spraying the UCNP solution on the leaves of lettuce and placing the lettuce under sunlight for 1 week, the wet/dry weight of the leaves increased by 53.33% and 45.71%, respectively. This nanoengineering of light-harvesting UCNPs may have great potential for applications in agriculture.

Oral infectious diseases and tooth staining, the main challenges of dental healthcare, are inextricably linked to microbial colonization and the formation of pathogenic biofilms. However, dentistry has so far still lacked simple, safe, and universal prophylactic options and therapy. Here, we report copper-doped carbon dots (Cu-CDs) that display enhanced catalytic (catalase-like, peroxidase-like) activity in the oral environment for inhibiting initial bacteria (

SnS2 has been extensive studied as an anode material for sodium storage owing to its high theoretical specific capacity, whereas the unsatisfied initial Coulombic efficiency (ICE) caused by the partial irreversible conversion reaction during the charge/discharge process is one of the critical issues that hamper its practical applications. Hence, heterostructured SnS2/Mn2SnS4/carbon nanoboxes (SMS/C NBs) have been developed by a facial wet-chemical method and utilized as the anode material of sodium ion batteries. SMS/C NBs can deliver an initial capacity of 841.2 mAh g–1 with high ICE of 90.8%, excellent rate capability (752.3, 604.7, 570.1, 546.9, 519.7, and 488.7 mAh g–1 at the current rate of 0.1, 0.5, 1.0, 2.0, 5.0, and 10.0 A g–1, respectively), and long cycling stability (522.5 mAh g–1 at 5.0 A g–1 after 500 cycles). The existence of SnS2/Mn2SnS4 heterojunctions can effectively stabilize the reaction products Sn and Na2S, greatly prevent the coarsening of nanosized Sn0, and enhance reversible conver...

Integrating a plasmonic metal and a semiconductor at the nanoscale is of great importance for exploring their optical coupling properties. However, the synthesis and fine structural control of such nanostructures remain challenging. Herein we report the facile aqueous-phase Se-mediated overgrowth of metal selenides onto Au nanocrystals. Taking plasmonic Cu2–xSe as an example, the introduction of a Se template allows deposition of large Cu2–xSe crystalline grains onto Au nanocrystal seeds in various shapes, including spheres, rods, and plates. Moreover, the configuration of Au–Cu2–xSe hybrids can be tuned from core–shell to heterodimer structure by controlling the growth behavior of the Se template. Se overgrowth depends critically on the absorption strength of stabilizers on Au seeds: a strongly absorbing stabilizer inhibits isotropic overgrowth, which is in agreement with molecular dynamics simulations. The resultant Au–Cu2–xSe hybrid nanocrystals possess multiple surface plasmon resonance modes. Finally...

Large-scale synthesis of two-dimensional (2D) materials is one of the significant issues for fabricating layered materials into practical devices. As one of the typical III-VI semiconductors, InSe has attracted much attention due to its outstanding electrical transport property, attractive quantum physics characteristics, and dramatic photoresponse when it is reduced to atomic scale. However, scalable synthesis of single phase 2D InSe has not yet been achieved so far, greatly hindering further fundamental studies and device applications. Here, we demonstrate the direct growth of wafer-scale layered InSe nanosheets by pulsed laser deposition (PLD). The obtained InSe layers exhibit good uniformity, high crystallinity with macro texture feature, and stoichiometric growth by in situ precise control. The characterization of optical properties indicates that PLD grown InSe nanosheets have a wide range tunable band gap (1.26-2.20 eV) among the large-scale 2D crystals. The device demonstration of field-effect transistor shows the n-type channel feature with high mobility of 10 cm

SnS

A general acid vapor oxidation (AVO) strategy has been developed to grow highly oriented hierarchically structured rutile TiO(2) nanoarrays with tunable morphologies from titanium thin films. This is a simple one-pot synthesis approach involving the reaction of a titanium surface with the vapor generated from a hydrochloric acid solution in a Teflon lined autoclave. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first successful attempt to grow ordered tree-like titania nanoarrays. A possible formation mechanism for the interesting architectures has been proposed based on series of time-dependent experiments. By adjusting the initial HCl concentration, films of different rutile structures including nanotrees, dendritic nanobundles, and nanorods can be selectively obtained. Subsequently, the surface morphologies and wettability can be readily tuned.