Cation effect has emerged as a promising strategy for modulating the product distribution during the electrocatalytic CO₂ reduction reaction (CO₂RR). However, the strategy of solely increasing bulk cation concentration in the electrolyte to intensify cation effect at the electrode interface exacerbates carbonate formation issue. Therefore, it is crucial to achieve local cation enrichment at the electrolyte interface without increasing bulk cation concentration. Herein, we propose a "surface charge density modulation" strategy to strengthen interfacial electric field, intensifying the local cation effect at the electrode interface in a low-concentration electrolyte. We implement this strategy using leaf-like CuO nanosheets, introducing a high-curvature morphology into the catalysts. As a result, the CuO nanosheets display 3.4-fold enhancement in Faradic efficiency (FE) of multi-carbon products (C₂₊) compared to CuO nanospheres with low-curvature. In-situ Raman spectroscopy and control experiment varying concentration of K⁺ reveal the mechanism on how the cation effect and interfacial electric field influence CO₂RR performance.

Stretchable and self-healable materials with excellent mechanical performance hold great promise for applications in flexible functional devices. Despite rapid developments, achieving high mechanical strength, extreme stretchability, and rapid self-healing capability in self-healing materials remains challenging. Here, inspired by the hierarchical structure and unique network of connective tissue, we fabricated a class of bionic nanocomposites with high stretchability, outstanding mechanical strength, and rapid self-healing ability by integrating the bottlebrush copolymer functionalized graphene oxide (BCP@GO) into a polyurethane (PU) matrix via in-situ polymerization. The bottlebrush copolymer (BCP) acted as a bond bridge for linking the GO nanosheets (noncovalent interaction) and PU chains (covalent and hydrogen-bond interaction). The covalent interactions were responsible for providing high mechanical strength, and the abundant hydrogen-bond-based cross-links realized extreme stretchability and rapid self-healing capability. The resultant BCP@GO/PU nanocomposite with only 0.5 wt.% GO loading exhibited excellent mechanical properties (tensile strength increased by 52.1%, up to 28.6 MPa; toughness increased by 70.8%, up to 256.9 MJ/m³; elongation at break increased by 12.8%, up to 1847.2%), exceptional rapid and efficient self-healing ability (~ 99% with 20 s NIR irradiation), as well as superior shape memory and recyclable capability. This study develops a new strategy for designing high-performance self-healing nanocomposites and unfolds broad application prospects in smart materials.

The electrocatalytic conversion of carbon dioxide (CO₂) into useful fuels and chemical feedstocks is an emerging route to alleviate global warming and reduce reliance on fossil fuels. Methanol (CH₃OH), as one of the most significant and widely used liquid fuels that can be generated by CO₂ reduction, is essential in the chemical industry. In this minireview, we unravel the origins of the selective formation of CH₃OH via CO₂ reduction, including catalyst composition designs, local structure modulations, and electrolyte/catalyst interface regulations. Finally, the remaining challenges and perspectives for the CO₂-to-CH₃OH reduction are proposed.

Electrochemical reduction of CO₂ to valuable formate as liquid fuel is a promising way to alleviate the greenhouse effect. The edge active sites in bismuth (Bi) nanosheets play a critical role in the electrochemical reduction of CO₂ into formate, which enable the operation of CO₂ reduction with high cathodic energy efficiency, especially under large current densities of ≥ 200 mA/cm². However, the undesirable reconstruction of small Bi nanosheets into large nanosheets leads to the decreasing of edge active sites during electrocatalysis. Here we report stable isolated ultrasmall bismuth nanosheets-synthesized by in-situ electrochemical transformation of ligands covered bismuth vanadate-on silver nanowires as an efficient electrocatalyst for CO₂-to-formate reduction. The cooperative electrocatalyst achieves a formate current density of 186 mA/cm² and a cathodic energy efficiency of 75% for formate, which is the only best compared to the literature results. Operando Raman and morphologic measurements demonstrate that the excellent energy utilization of the electrocatalyst is originated from the rich edge active sites with Bi-O species of the ultrasmall Bi nanosheets.

Perovskite quantum dots (PQDs) require ligands on their surfaces to passivate defects and prevent aggregation. However, the ligands construct the interface relationship between the PQDs, which may seriously hinder the carrier transport. Hence, we propose a molecular engineering strategy of using 3, 4-ethylenedioxythiophene (EDOT) to perfectly solve this problem, benefiting from its high conjugation and passivation ability to CsPbBr₃ PQDs. Furthermore, EDOT on the surface of PQDs can be in-situ polymerized under the photocurrent of the photodetector, thus interconnecting the PQDs which enhanced the performance of the photodetectors up to 178% of its initial performance. We have thoroughly investigated the electropolymerization process of EDOT and its passivation effect on PQDs. The simple lateral photodetector based on EDOT PQDs exhibits a high responsivity of 11.96 A/W, which is 10⁴ times higher than that of oleic acid caped PQDs. Due to the protection of poly(3, 4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT), the photodetector prepared from EDOT PQDs exhibited very high stability, retaining 94% of its performance after six months in air. This strategy provides a solution for the application of PQDs in high performances and stable optoelectronic devices.