Oxygen vacancies enable modulating surface reconstruction of transition metal oxides containing metal–oxygen polyhedrons into metallic oxyhydroxide for oxygen evolution reaction (OER), while revealing reconstructing mechanism is stuck by the requirement to precisely control exact sites of these vacancies. Herein, oxygen vacancies are localized only within MoO₄ tetrahedrons rather than CoO₆ octahedrons in CoMoO₄ catalyst, guaranteeing coherent reconstruction of CoO₆ octahedrons into pure CoOOH with tunable activities for OER. Meanwhile, distorted tetrahedron accelerates the dissolution of Mo atoms into alkaline electrolyte, triggering spontaneous transition of partial CoMoO₄ into Co(OH)₂. CoO₆ octahedrons in both CoMoO₄ and Co(OH)₂ can transform pure CoOOH completely at lower potential, resulting in excess intrinsic activity whose summit is identified by overpotential at 10 mA cm⁻² with 22.9% reduction and Tafel slope with 65.3% reduction. Well-defined manipulation over the distorted polyhedrons offers one versatile knob to precisely modulate electronic structure of oxide catalysts with outstanding OER performance.

Photoluminescence (PL) of transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) can be engineered by controlling the density of defects, which provide active sites for electron-hole recombination, either radiatively or non-radiatively. However, the implantation of defects by external stimulation, such as uniaxial tension and irradiation, tends to introduce local damages or structural non-homogeneity, which greatly degrades their luminescence properties and impede their applicability in constructing optoelectronic devices. In this paper, we present a strategy to introduce a controllable level of defects into the MoS₂ monolayers by adding a hydrogen flow during the chemical vapor deposition, without sacrificing their luminescence characteristics. The density of the defect is controlled directly by the concentration of hydrogen. For an appropriate hydrogen flux, the monolayer MoS₂ sheets have three times stronger PL emission at the excitonic transitions, compared with those samples with nearly perfect crystalline structure. The defect-bounded exciton transitions at lower energies arising in the defective samples and are maximized when the total PL is the strongest. However, the B exciton, exhibits a monotonic decline as the defect density increases. The Raman spectra of the defective MoS₂ reveal a redshift (blueshift) of the in-plane (out-of-plane) vibration modes as the hydrogen flux increases. All the evidence indicates that the generated defects are in the form of sulfur vacancies. This study renders the high-throughput synthesis of defective MoS₂ possible for catalysis or light emitting applications.

The relatively poor dynamic response of current flexible strain gauges has prevented their wide adoption in portable electronics. In this work, we present a greatly improved flexible strain gauge, where one strip of Au nanoparticle (NP) monolayer assembled on a polyethylene terephthalate film is utilized as the active unit. The proposed flexible gauge is capable of responding to applied stimuli without detectable hysteresis via electron tunneling between adjacent nanoparticles within the Au NP monolayer. Based on experimental quantification of the time and frequency domain dependence of the electrical resistance of the proposed strain gauge, acoustic vibrations in the frequency range of 1 to 20, 000 Hz could be reliably detected. In addition to being used to measure musical tone, audible speech, and creature vocalization, as demonstrated in this study, the ultrafast dynamic response of this flexible strain gauge can be used in a wide range of applications, including miniaturized vibratory sensors, safe entrance guard management systems, and ultrasensitive pressure sensors.

The reliability and sensitivity of a strain gauge made from a nanoparticle monolayer intrinsically depend on electron tunneling between the adjacent nanoparticles, so that creating nanoscale interstitials with uniform distribution and tuning the interparticle separation reversibly during cyclic mechanical stress are two vital issues for performance enhancement. In this work, one assembly technique is initialized to fabricate parallel nanoparticle strips by precisely tailoring the contact angle of a gold colloid on a substrate. The assembly of a nanoparticle monolayer with a close-packed pattern can be simultaneously switched on and off by independently varying the contact angle across a threshold value of 4.2°. This nanoparticle strip shows a reversible and reliable electrical response even if a mechanical strain as small as 0.027% is periodically supplied, implying well-controlled electron tunneling between the adjacent nanoparticles.