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Electrochemiluminescence (ECL) represents a widely explored technique to generate light, in which the emission intensity relies critically on the charge‐transfer reactions between electrogenerated radicals. Two types of charge‐transfer mechanisms have been postulated for ECL generation, but the manipulation and effective probing of these routes remain a fundamental challenge. Here, we demonstrate the design of quantum dot (QD) aerogels as novel ECL luminophores via a versatile water‐induced gelation strategy. The strong electronic coupling between adjacent QDs enables efficient charge transport within the aerogel network, leading to the generation of highly efficient ECL based on the selectively improved interparticle charge‐transfer route. This mechanism is further verified by designing CdSe‐CdTe mixed QD aerogels, where the two mechanistic routes are clearly decoupled for ECL generation. We anticipate our work will advance the fundamental understanding of ECL and prove useful for designing next‐generation QD‐based devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, great efforts have been spent on addressing concerns over energy and environmental crises. Among these efforts, electrocatalysis is widely recognized and studied for its high efficiency and easy processability. As a class of emerging electrocatalysts, metal aerogels (MAs) stand out in the last decade. In virtue of their three-dimensional conductive pathways, their library of catalytically/optically active sites, and their robust network structures, MAs have unique advantages in electrocatalysis. However, due to the short history of MAs, there is insufficient research on them, leaving significant room for material design and performance optimization. This perspective will mainly focus on electrocatalysis with MAs, aiming to summarize the state-of-the-art progress and to guide the on-target design of efficient MAs-based electrocatalysts towards energy- and environment-related applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is considered as one of the major roadblocks for many renewable electrochemical energy technologies, such as water splitting, rechargeable metal‐air batteries. Thus the development of efficient and low‐cost OER electrocatalysts has achieved a lot of research and development attention. Aerogels, as featured by large surface area, high porosity, and self‐supportability, provide an excellent platform for the design of efficient electrocatalysts. This review summarizes the recent progress of the aerogel‐based design of catalysts in tackling the challenges in the field of OER electrocatalysis. The correlation between catalyst design strategy and catalytic performances is evaluated to provide a roadmap for the development of aerogel‐based OER electrocatalysts. Thereafter, the current state of our understanding of the application of the aerogel concept in OER electrocatalysis is provided, which could serve as a guide to the development of future aerogel electrocatalysts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The development of core–shell structures remains a fundamental challenge for pure metallic aerogels. Here we report the synthesis of PdxAu‐Pt core–shell aerogels composed of an ultrathin Pt shell and a composition‐tunable PdxAu alloy core. The universality of this strategy ensures the extension of core compositions to Pd transition‐metal alloys. The core–shell aerogels exhibited largely improved Pt utilization efficiencies for the oxygen reduction reaction and their activities show a volcano‐type relationship as a function of the lattice parameter of the core substrate. The maximum mass and specific activities are 5.25 A mgPt−1 and 2.53 mA cm−2, which are 18.7 and 4.1 times higher than those of Pt/C, respectively, demonstrating the superiority of the core–shell metallic aerogels. The proposed core‐based activity descriptor provides a new possible strategy for the design of future core–shell electrocatalysts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report an efficient approach to assemble a variety of electrostatically stabilized all-inorganic semiconductor nanocrystals (NCs) by their linking with appropriate ions into multibranched gel networks. These all-inorganic non-ordered 3D assemblies benefit from strong interparticle coupling, which facilitates charge transport between the NCs with diverse morphologies, compositions, sizes, and functional capping ligands. Moreover, the resulting dry gels (aerogels) are highly porous monolithic structures, which preserve the quantum confinement of their building blocks. The inorganic semiconductor aerogel made of 4.5 nm CdSe colloidal NCs capped with I− ions and bridged with Cd2+ ions had a large surface area of 146 m2 g−1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One plausible approach to endow aerogels with specific properties while preserving their other attributes is to fine-tune the building blocks. However, the preparation of metallic aerogels with designated properties, for example catalytically beneficial morphologies and transition-metal doping, still remains a challenge. Here, we report on the first aerogel electrocatalyst composed entirely of alloyed PdNi hollow nanospheres (HNSs) with controllable chemical composition and shell thickness. The combination of transition-metal doping, hollow building blocks, and the three-dimensional network structure make the PdNi HNS aerogels promising electrocatalysts for ethanol oxidation. The mass activity of the Pd83Ni17 HNS aerogel is 5.6-fold higher than that of the commercial Pd/C catalyst. This work expands the exploitation of the electrocatalysis properties of aerogels through the morphology and composition control of its building blocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]