In nature, the water-splitting reaction via photosynthesis driven by sunlight in plants, algae, and cyanobacteria stores the vast solar energy and provides vital oxygen to life on earth. The recent advances in elucidating the structures and functions of natural photosynthesis has provided firm framework and solid foundation in applying the knowledge to transform the carbon-based energy to renew...

Among transition metal oxides, tungsten trioxide is one of the most interesting materials exhibiting a wide variety of novel properties particularly in thin film form useful for advanced technological applications. It exhibits structural transformations and substoichiometric phase transitions, which attracted the attention of researchers over the past few years to explore their potential scient...

Modifications of local structure at atomic level could precisely and effectively tune the capacity of materials, enabling enhancement in the catalytic activity. Here we modulate the local atomic structure of a classical but inert transition metal oxide, tungsten trioxide, to be an efficient electrocatalyst for hydrogen evolution in acidic water, which has shown promise as an alternative to plat...

A WO3-Fe2O3 thin film combinatorial library was fabricated using a vapor phase co-deposition method followed by a combined thermal annealing and oxidation process. The scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis of the library microstructure combined with X-ray diffraction (XRD) investigations suggested that α-Fe2O3 grains preferentially grow from boundaries of domains, containing finer grains ...

Mass spectrometry is the most widely used tool in the study of the properties and reactivity of clusters in the gas phase. In this article, we demonstrate its use in investigating the molecular-level details of oxidation reactions occurring on the surfaces of heterogeneous catalysts via cluster reactivity experiments. Guided ion beam mass spectrometry (GIB-MS) employing a quadrupole-octopole-qu...

A fabrication technique is developed for the preparation of metal oxide/CNT composites. An essential feature of the technique lies in the use of non-aqueous electrolyte in place of the usual aqueous electrolyte, which ensures welldispersed CNTs without surfactants. After a “seed” is formed by electroplating on the anode, the seed is simply pulled up at a certain speed to grow one-dimensional CN...

In this study, a sol-gel peroxotungstic acid sol was employed to deposit tungsten oxide (WO3) films by the spin-coating technique. In view of smart window applications, electrochromic windows were then designed and fabricated using a thin tungsten oxide film. For this purpose, Glass/ FTO/ WO3/ electrolyte/ FTO/Glass could be of use due to its special structure that consists of an electrochromic...

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) represents a very powerful tool for the identification of molecular species, but unfortunately it has been essentially restricted to noble metal supports (Au, Ag and Cu). While the application of semiconductor materials as SERS substrate would enormously widen the range of uses for this technique, the detection sensitivity has been much inferior and th...

The crystal structure of the title compound, [WBr(NO)(C(6)H(16)P(2))(2)], reveals a distorted octa-hedral geometry around the W centre. The W atom lies on a special position at an inversion centre (the Br and NO ligands are equally disordered). The bis-(dimethyl-phosphino)ethane ligand is also severely disordered (site occupancy factors 0.52 and 0.48). This is the first structure of a tungsten ...