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Remnant tensile strain in the perovskite films induced in the thermal annealing step is a known source of material and device instabilities. Here Xue et al. use a thermal expandable hole transporting layer to compensate the strain and result in most stable wide-bandgap perovskite solar cells so far.

Perovskite-like antibonding VBM electronic structure is predicted to result in defect-tolerant materials. Here, the authors investigate GeSe with antibonding VBM from Ge 4s-Se 4p coupling, and a certified 5.2% PCE is obtained with high stability due to its strong covalent bonding.

The electrosynthesis of CO via integrated capture and conversion of dilute CO₂ suffers from low energy efficiency. Here, the authors report an amino acid salt-based system that employs a single-atom catalyst and operates at an elevated temperature and pressure, which enables efficient CO production.

On copper catalysts, Cu^δ+ sites play a key role in the electrochemical reduction of CO₂ to C₂ hydrocarbons, however, they are prone to being reduced (to Cu⁰) themselves. Now, a Cu^δ+-based catalyst is reported that is stable for in excess of ~40 hours while electrochemically reducing CO₂ to multi-carbon hydrocarbons and that exhibits a Faradaic efficiency for C₂ of ~80%.

The electrocatalytic upgrading of CO to higher-value fuels provides a promising route to multi-carbon alcohol products. Here, the authors show that high alcohol selectivity and activity can be achieved by incorporating palladium in copper.

Microfluidic quantitative immunomagnetic cell sorting efficiently recovers potent tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes from solid tumours by leveraging specific expression levels of target cell-surface markers.

Here, the authors utilise a combination of quasi-spherical theory and Jahn-Teller distortion to enhance the piezoelectric response of molecular metal halides, and the resulting piezoelectric energy harvesters exhibit superior power densities to the best-reported molecular hybrid energy harvesters.

Electrochemical conversion of carbon dioxide to methane can store intermittent renewable electricity in a staple of global energy. Here, the authors develop a moderator strategy to maintain the catalyst in a low coordination state, thereby enabling stable and selective electrochemical methanation.

CO₂-to-ethylene conversion using renewable electricity provides a sustainable route to produce valuable chemicals. Here, the authors report high ethylene activity of 215 mA cm⁻² and selectivity of 65% made possible by silica clusters in copper.

Metal-halide perovskite based tandem solar cells are appealing but making a high efficiency device is not trivial. Here Chen et al. increase the carrier collection in the perovskite layer and largely enhance the efficiency in tandem cells when combined with colloidal quantum dot or silicon layers.

Copper-based catalysts are promising for electroreduction of carbon monoxide to multi-carbon products, yet further improvements in selectivity, productivity and stability are still needed. Here the authors show that doping copper with silver and ruthenium boosts its performance towards synthesis of n-propanol—a useful fuel.

Creating fine nanostructures on sensing electrodes can improve and expand the detection sensitivities of biosensors for nucleic acids

While multi-carbon (C₂₊) products present high-value species attainable from emitted carbon dioxide, it is challenging to prepare stable, C₂₊ selective catalysts. Here, authors support copper on copper nitride to improve copper’s electrocatalytic stability and selectivity toward C₂₊ synthesis.

A solution-processed electronic device that uses colloidal quantum dots of lead sulphide outperforms the state-of-the-art crystalline alternatives, with ease of fabrication, physical flexibility, large device areas and low cost among its benefits.

Converting CO2 and H2O into value-added chemical feedstocks and fuels offers a carbon neutral approach to tackling global energy and climate concerns. Here the authors report a metal supported single-atom catalytic site enabling the electrocatalytic reduction of CO2 to methane.

Despite their high efficiencies, perovskite solar cells still suffer from degradation issues that impede their practical deployment. Saidaminov et al. explore the effect of local lattice strain on vacancy formation and show that careful choice of dopants plays a key role, enhancing the device stability.

It is challenging to realize doping and surface passivation simultaneously in colloidal quantum dot inks. Here Choi et al. employ a cascade surface modification approach to solve the problem and obtain record high efficiency of 13.3% for bulk homojunction solar cells based on these inks.

Generating aptamers for use as affinity reagents in analytical applications is important, but SELEX, the standard method for aptamer generation, is unable to select for pre-defined binding affinities. Now, by combining efficient particle display, high-performance microfluidic sorting and high-content bioinformatics, the method ‘Pro-SELEX’ can afford the quantitative generation of aptamers with programmable binding affinities.

The development of nanomaterials for imaging and drug delivery has been of great interest to the field. Here, the authors synthesized multifunctional enzyme-responsive hydrogels with self-assembling quantum dots for nucleic acid and drug delivery as well as having imaging capability.

Potent circulating tumour-reactive lymphocytes can be isolated from peripheral blood at high yield and purity via microfluidic immunomagnetic cell sorting.

COVID-19 can be associated with neurological complications. Here the authors show that markers of brain injury, but not immune markers, are elevated in the blood of patients with COVID-19 both early and months after SARS-CoV-2 infection, particularly in those with brain dysfunction or neurological diagnoses.

Metal halide perovskites are promising for solar energy harvesting, but currently prone to a large hysteresis and current instability. Here, Xu et al. show improvements in a hybrid material in which the fullerene is distributed at perovskite grain boundaries and thus passivates defects effectively.

Point-of-care analytical devices are of interest for diagnostic applications where larger scale laboratory instruments are not feasible or available. Here, the authors present a direct read-out colorimetric sensor which uses catalytic gas production to visualize picomolar concentrations of DNA.

The efficiency and operating lifetimes of perovskite light-emitting diodes is improved by using a fluorinated triphenylphosphine oxide additive to control the cation diffusion during film deposition and passivate the surface.

Catalysts that can selectively reduce carbon dioxide to C2+ products are attractive for the generation of more complex and useful chemicals. Here, an electro-redeposited copper catalyst is shown to provide excellent selectivity and high current density for ethylene formation. Detailed characterization and theory link the performance to the catalyst morphology.

Ultrasmall monodisperse perovskite quantum dots are synthesized in situ on a substrate via ligand structure regulation, yielding the highest external quantum efficiency blue perovskite LEDs reported so far.

Copper is unique among CO₂ electrocatalysts owing to its ability to produce multicarbon products at high rates; however, achieving selectivity for specific products remains challenging. Here, Cu surfaces decorated with alkaline earth metal oxides are found to strongly favour alcohols over hydrocarbons.

The precise control over nanoscale structures is crucial in developing new, functional nanomaterials. Here, authors demonstrate a controllable method to epitaxially stack CdS quantum dots into ZnS nanowires and show improved photocatalytic hydrogen evolution activities.

Multimetal oxyhydroxides are among the most active catalysts for alkaline water oxidation, but tuning their properties remains a challenge. Now, the performance of NiFe- and FeCo-based catalysts is optimized with the incorporation of high-valence modulator metals, which shifts the active metals towards lower valence states and enables lower overpotentials.

Formamidinium-lead-iodide-based perovskites have a preferred bandgap below 1.55 eV for solar cell applications but suffer from operational instability. Here, Zhao et al. improve the film quality using cesium-containing seeded growth to show high stabilized efficiency and more than 100 h lifetime under simulated sunlight.

Electrochemical conversion of CO₂ into high-value products is attractive for lowering net carbon emissions. Lee et al. present the valorization of chemisorbed CO₂ to CO in an aqueous monoethanolamine electrolyte via tailoring of the electrochemical double layer, with 72% Faradaic efficiency at 50 mA cm^–2.

To date, lasing in colloidal quantum dot solids has been limited to the nanosecond temporal range, limiting the potential for solution-processed lasers. Here, the authors combine thermal management with low amplified spontaneous emission threshold to produce microsecond-sustained lasing.

The realisation of film made up of different compositions using colloidal QD inks remains a challenge because of redispersing of underlying films by polar solvents. Here, the authors introduce aromatic ligands to achieve QD inks in weakly-polar solvents that enable fabrication of multi-compositional films.

Methylammonium is shown to influence the crystallization process in hybrid lead halide perovskites, leading to a more homogeneous chemical distribution of caesium and formamidinium and improved charge transport between grains in multi-cation systems.

The phenotypes of circulating tumour cells are profiled in whole blood by exploiting a microfluidic chip based on magnetic nanoparticles, leading to single-cell resolution.

Solution processed colloidal quantum dots are emerging photovoltaic materials with tuneable infrared bandgaps. Here, Yang et al. create a class of quantum dot bulk heterojunction solar cell via ligand design, enabling longer photocarrier diffusion lengths for greater photocurrent and performance.

Electrosynthesis of multicarbon products from CO₂ is restricted by the proton-rich conditions in strong acids leading to unfavourable hydrogen evolution. Now a heterogeneous catalyst adlayer composed of covalent organic framework nanoparticles and cation-exchange ionomers is reported to regulate the local pH, suppressing H₂ generation and promoting multicarbon formation.

Reduced-dimensional halide perovskites are promising for light-emitting diodes but suffer from photo-degradation. Here Quan et al. identify the edge of the perovskite nanoplatelets as the degradation channels and use phosphine oxides to passivate the edges and boost device performance and lifetime.

Catalysts for CO electroreduction have focused on Cu, and their main products have been C₂ chemicals. Here authors use the concept of asymmetric active sites to develop a class of doped Cu catalysts for C-C coupling, delivering record selectivity to n-propanol.

Centrifugal casting is widely used to fabricate functional materials that exhibit built-in spatial gradients due to the variation in material density. Kim et al.use this method to prepare colloidal quantum dot films for the first time, based on which photodetectors with gradient bandgap are built.

Efficient implementation of quantum dot and well architectures are restricted to costly vacuum-epitaxially-grown semiconductors. The authors use quantum dots in perovskite to build field-emission photodiodes that are sensitive across the visible and into the short-wavelength infrared.

While perovskite solar cells with an inverted architecture hold great promise for operation stability, their power conversion efficiency lags behind that of conventional cells. Here, Zheng et al. achieve a certified 22.34% efficiency, exploiting alkylamine ligands as grain and interface modifiers.

A certified efficiency of 26.4% in all-perovskite tandem solar cells, exceeding that of the best-performing single-junction perovskite solar cells, is achieved by control over surface defects in the Pb–Sn subcell.