We have developed a novel organometallic catalysis and applied it to drug discovery. Two new catalysts were found, ruthenium hydride with a nitrogen-containing heterocyclic carbene (A) and an organopalladium catalyst supported on a sulfur-terminated semiconductor, gallium arsenide (001) (B). Both catalysts are environmentally benign, because A can yield indole derivatives with good atom economy...

The generation of sustainable and stable semiconductors for solar energy conversion by photoredox catalysis, for example, light-induced water splitting and carbon dioxide reduction, is a key challenge of modern materials chemistry. Here we present a simple synthesis of a ternary semiconductor, boron carbon nitride, and show that it can catalyse hydrogen or oxygen evolution from water as well as...

Heterostructures play an important role not only in the manufacture of semiconductor devices, but also in the field of catalysis. Herein, we report the synthesis of PdO/TiO2 and Pd/TiO2 heterostructured nanobelts by means of a simple co-precipitation method, followed by a reduction process using surface-modified TiO2 nanobelts as templates. The as-obtained heterostructures were characterized by...

In recent years, semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) sometimes also referred to as nanoparticles (NPs) or nanocrystals (NCs) have attracted much attention for many potential applications due to their unique physical and chemical properties such as size-dependent band gap, size dependent excitonic emission, enhanced nonlinear optical properties and size-dependent electronic properties attributed to...

Silicon nanocrystals offer huge advantages compared to other semi-conductor quantum dots as they are made from an abundant, non-toxic material and are compatible with silicon devices. Besides, among a wealth of extraordinary properties ranging from catalysis to nanomedicine, metal nanoparticles are known to increase the radiative emission rate of semiconductor quantum dots. Here, we use gold na...

Theoretical limiting efficiencies have a critical role in determining technological viability and expectations for device prototypes, as evidenced by the photovoltaics community's focus on detailed balance. However, due to their multicomponent nature, photoelectrochemical devices do not have an equivalent analogue to detailed balance, and reported theoretical efficiency limits vary depending on...

Since the discovery of mesostructured materials in the early 1990s a great deal of effort has been devoted to developing new structures, compositions, and functionalities. The ability to synthesize semiconducting singleor multicomponent metal-oxide mesostructured materials with controlled morphologies has been a major step towards functional materials with potential applications in sensing, cat...

Layered two-dimensional (2D) inorganic transition-metal dichalchogenides (TMDs) have attracted great interest as a result of their potential application in optoelectronics, catalysis, and medicine. However, methods to functionalize and process such 2D TMDs remain scarce. We have established a facile route towards functionalized layered MoS2 . We found that the reaction of liquid-exfoliated 2D M...

Enhanced synthetic control of the morphology, crystal structure, and composition of nanostructures can drive advances in nanoscale devices. Axial and radial semiconductor nanowires are examples of nanostructures with one and two structural degrees of freedom, respectively, and their synthetically tuned and modulated properties have led to advances in nanotransistor, nanophotonic, and thermoelec...

Metal-organic frameworks are nano-porous adsorbents of relevance to gas separation and catalysis, and separation of oxygen from air is essential to diverse industrial applications. The ferrous salt of 2,5-dihydroxy-terephthalic acid, a metal-organic framework of the MOF74 family, can selectively adsorb oxygen in a manner that defies the classical picture: adsorption sites either do or do not sh...