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Proton-exchange membrane water electrolysers rely on iridium to catalyse their anodic reaction, and while ruthenium is a less costly alternative due to its similar activity, it is not as stable. Now, a hierarchical machine-learning catalyst discovery workflow, termed mixed acceleration, is put forward to predict catalyst synthesis, activity and stability, and identify promising RuO_x-based water oxidation catalysts.

Single crystals of organolead halide perovskites exhibit large carrier mobilities and long diffusion lengths. Here, the authors succeed in growing the single crystals on planar substrates and integrate them as the active layer of visible photodetectors with a large gain-bandwidth product.

An improved ligand-exchange process allows the realization of solution-deposited films of quantum dots with reduced energetic disorder and, as a result, solar cells with improved open-circuit voltage, charge-carrier transport and stability.

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.

Previous photodetectors based on solution-processed colloidal quantum dots have demonstrated either rapid response times or high sensitivity. Researchers have now taken advantage of new insights into charge transport in these devices to build photodiodes that offer both rapid response times and high sensitivity.

Semiconductor nanocrystals capped with DNA can be used to make a variety of rationally designed assemblies with switchable optical properties.

Researchers report a colloidal quantum-dot solar cell that features two junctions, each designed to absorb and convert different spectral bands of light within the solar spectrum. The device offers a power conversion efficiency of 4.2% and an open circuit voltage of 1.06 V.

Improving the long-range order of the quantum dots in perovskite LEDs can markedly enhance their operational stability.

A scheme to control the confinement within 2D/3D perovskite heterostructures results in stable, efficient inverted perovskite solar cells.

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.

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.

Colloidal quantum dots and organics have complementary properties apt for photovoltaics, yet their combination has led to poor charge collection. Here, Baek et al. introduce small molecules that act as a bridge between quantum dots and polymers, thus improving device efficiency and 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.

We report assembly of an organic scaffold within perovskite structures, resulting in the suppression of the lone pair expression of Ge and templating the symmetric octahedra.

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.

Colloidal quantum dots are promising materials for efficient low-cost solar cells and optoelectronics, but their performance does not improve with increased carrier mobility. Here, the authors show instead that the spacing between recombination centres controls the diffusion length.

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.

Solution-processed lead–tin binary perovskite photodetectors that have an external quantum efficiency of 85% at 850 nm, dark current below 10^–8 A cm^–2 and response time faster than 100 ps can be used in light detection and ranging applications, resolving sub-millimetre distances with a typical 50 µm standard deviation.

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.

Efficient harvest of solar energy beyond the silicon absorption edge of 1100 nm by semiconductor solar cells remains a challenge. Here Sun et al. mix high multi-bandgap lead sulfide colloidal quantum dot ensembles to further increase both short circuit current and open circuit voltage.

Light-emitting diodes based on mixed-dimensionality perovskite solids show outstanding radiative properties in the near-infrared region.

Although several techniques have been reported to obtain electron-rich colloidal quantum dots, these materials usually suffer from poor stability under air exposure. It is now shown that the use of strongly bound ligands and a careful ligands-exchange strategy lead to air-stable n-type quantum dots that can be used in solar cells and chemical sensors.

Organic ligands enhance the stability and the solution processability of semiconductor quantum dots, but they can impede charge transport in films of such nanoparticles. Passivation with atomic ligands now offers an alternative strategy that enables the fabrication of PbS colloidal-quantum-dot solar cells with power-conversion efficiencies of up to 6%.

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.

Green light-emitting diodes with a brightness of 460,000 cd m^–2 and a low turn-on voltage of 2.5 V are enabled by the use of a chlorination treatment to provide conductive passivation of the devices.

A new matrix engineering strategy enables improvements of CQD solar cell efficiency via considerable enhancement of the photocarrier diffusion length.

The stability of both colloidal quantum dots and perovskites can be improved by combining them into a hybrid material in which matched lattice parameters suppress the formation of undesired phases.

A solution-based ligand-exchange strategy enables the realization of close-packed quantum dot solid films with near-unity photoluminescence quantum yield and high charge carrier mobility.

Spin-polarized photon absorption and photoluminescence are reported in reduced-dimensional chiral perovskite materials. The finding indicates that such materials may in the future be useful as a photonic interface for spintronics.

Improved performance in a photovoltaic device made of colloidal quantum dots is achieved through a combination of passivation by halide anions and organic crosslinking.

Organohalide perovskites and preformed colloidal quantum dots are combined in the solution phase to produce epitaxially aligned ‘dots-in-a-matrix’ crystals that have both the excellent electrical transport properties of the perovskite matrix and the high radiative efficiency of the quantum dots.

By switching shell growth on and off on the (0001) facet of wurtzite CdSe cores to produce a built-in biaxial strain that lowers the optical gain threshold, we achieve continuous-wave lasing in colloidal quantum dot films.