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Stille cross-coupling reactions catalysed by an ideal catalyst combining the high activity of homogeneous catalysts and the reusability of heterogeneous catalysts are of great interest for C–C bond formation, which is a widely used reaction in fine chemistry. Despite great effort to increase the utilization ratio of surface metal atoms, the activity of heterogeneous catalysts under mild conditions remains unsatisfactory. Herein, we design a proof-of-concept strategy to trigger the room-temperature activity of heterogeneous Au catalysts by decreasing the electron density at the interface of a rationally designed Schottky heterojunction of Au metals and boron-doped carbons. The electron-deficient Au nanoparticles formed as a result of the rectifying contact with boron-doped carbons facilitate the autocleavage of C–Br bonds for highly efficient C–C coupling reactions of alkylbromides and allylstannanes with a TOF value of 5199 h−1 at room temperature, surpassing that of the state-of-the-art homogeneous catalyst.

A stable artificial solid electrolyte interphase (ASEI) containing phosphazene and perfluoroalkoxy groups was designed to protect Li anodes. The ASEI with high ionic conductivity and mechanical robustness successfully suppressed the growth of Li dendrites, significantly enhancing the electrochemical performance of the Li-O2 batteries.

We described an effective way to generate a Co3O4 mesocrystal array with well-developed porosity, simply by uniting a coupled interface with hydrazine treatment. Due to the fast electron transfer and sufficient active sites, the Ti mesh-supported Co3O4 nanoneedles electrode could provide a current density of 49.9 mA cm−2 at 570 mV OER overpotential and has exceptionally high stability.

The oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is the rate-limiting process for water splitting, and highly efficient large-area OER photoanodes have been considered as an essential part in photoelectrochemical water splitting reactors. The high hole–electron separation efficiency of photoanodes is highly required for real applications of photoanodes in sufficiently harvesting solar energy. Herein we show that the inactive g-C3N4 nanolayers can be self-assembled with BiVO4 into a highly coupled BV/CN dyad to significantly enhance the charge separation efficiency of BiVO4 photoelectrodes for the OER. The incident photon-to-current conversion efficiency (IPCE) of visible light (400 nm) provided by the scalable BV/CN-5 photoanode was estimated to be 50% at 1.23 V vs. RHE in 0.5 M Na2SO4 solution and significantly increased to 97% at a bias voltage of 1.6 V vs. RHE.

Room-temperature crystallization, a mild and energy-efficient process, shows important application potentials for developing functional materials. We significantly accelerated the crystallization of amorphous TiO2 at room temperature by storing photogenerated electrons and the resulting porous anatase titania exhibits ultrahigh surface areas up to 736 m2 g-1.

The Kirkendall effect was utilized to synthesize mesoporous silicalite-1 zeolite nanocrystals without the involvement of additional templates. The mesopore size as well as the particle size can be easily controlled by nanoscale Kirkendall growth via significantly reducing the amount of water or tetrapropylammonium hydroxide, which were used in large quantities in conventional methods. The Kirkendall growth method is thus suitable for large-scale synthesis of mesoporous MFI zeolites with very high yields but low cost for practical applications.

Room-temperature spontaneous crystallization of porous amorphous titania to a high-surface-area anatase material was observed in the absence of any solvent, additive and catalyst. The as-obtained porous titania serves as an efficient photocatalyst for H2 evolution, and its activity is more than twice that of the benchmark P25 TiO2.

An electron-rich zinc-modified zeolite Y material shows substantial activity for the decomposition of CO(2) to carbon with the release of O(2) at about 300 °C. It is elucidated that electrons delocalized in the vicinity of zinc cations in the zeolite material play an essential role in the decomposition reaction.

Size-dependent 3D superlattices have been fabricated from ZnO nanocrystals capped with ionic liquid components; on the basis of X-ray diffraction, two packing modes, that is, hexagonal and face-centered cubic close packings, have been discovered for the superlattices consisting of the ZnO nanocrystals as building blocks.

Hydrothermal synthesis of two new fluorinated indium phosphates [InPO 4 F(Hen)] and [In 5 P 4 F 3 O 16 (en) 3 (O H 2 ) 2 ] is carried out in the system In 2 O 3 –P 2 O 5 –en –HF–H 2 O (en = ethylenediamine); these have two- and three-dimensional inorganic frameworks respectively, with the latter having ten-membered ring channels spanned by coordinated en; the fluorides bridge exclusively between indium ions and may be linear or bent.