🧪 Our new ACS Materials Au Perspective explores soft organic dications for doping control in perovskite QDs. ✨ More than hopeful—we’re convinced tin-halide perovskite nanocrystals have a bright future as quantum-light sources! 📖 doi.org/10.1021/acsmaterials…

💡 Keeping perovskite optical gain going means keeping heat under control. New in Advanced Science: we investigate light amplification in thermally evaporated CsPbBr₃ films under long-pulse and continuous-wave excitation. 🔬 At 90 K, sapphire-supported films sustain amplified spontaneous emission with excitation pulses up to 30 µs, versus ~2 µs on glass—without encapsulation or post-processing. 🌡️ Heat accumulation emerges as the dominant limitation under extended excitation. Better heat extraction is essential for progress toward continuous-wave and electrically pumped perovskite lasers. advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley…

Thrilled to share our new paper in ACS Energy Letters! 🔋 We used Substrate-Enhanced Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) to grow an ultra-thin, conformal Lithium Niobate layer on NMC cathodes. This protects the cathode and paves the way for safer, longer-lasting batteries! ⚡🔬 Read our work here 👇 pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs…

The surface chemistry of perovskite QDs is a cornerstone. Ligands play a highly complex role: progress requires understanding how they influence post-synthetic stability, and acknowledging that many are essential for the actual formation of these QDs 🧪. ​our new artixle in Chem. Sci. leverages this dynamic via A-site cation precursors: ​📏 Size control: Precursor tail length, rather than the headgroup, dictates the final QD size. ​🎯 Precision: Steric tuning enables exact sizes from 18 down to 3 nm. ​🚀 Efficiency: The approach yields up to a 40-fold increase compared to conventional routes. Yuliia Berezovska , Dmitry Dirin et al. doi.org/10.1039/D6SC05095F

🎉 Our latest research is out in Advanced Materials: "Single-Particle FRET Probes Heterogeneity in the Ligand Shell of Colloidal Perovskite Quantum Dots" by Leon Feld ( @FeldF ) et al. One of our main research outputs in the scope of SNSF-sponsored NCCR Catalysis. ​We developed a method using single-particle photoluminescence spectroscopy to probe the notoriously difficult-to-characterize organic ligand shell of quantum dots (QDs) at the molecular scale, as well as to monitor FRET. ​✨ Key Takeaways: ​📏 We tagged ligand tails with dyes to measure ligand tail end-to-QD distances via FRET at sub-nanometer resolution. ​🔍 Revealed nanometer-scale variations in dye-surface distances within individual particles and across different ligand chemistries. ​💻 Linked these variations directly to local ligand coverage using atomistic modelling. ​📖 Read the full article: doi.org/10.1002/adma.75051

🔋 Does capacity always dictate a battery's potential? In our latest article in Accounts of Materials Research, we confront this assumption by focusing on a highly promising newcomer CAM (cathode active material): Lithium Iron Chloride (Li₂FeCl₄). While Li₂FeCl₄ may have a lower theoretical capacity compared to traditional commercial materials, we demonstrate that it more than makes up for it with a critical advantage—⚡ exceptionally high ionic conductivity. Why is this high conductivity so important? 🚀 Rapid ion transport drastically reduces internal resistance. ⚡ It significantly boosts overall kinetic and power performance. 🛠️ It opens exciting new, competitive pathways for fast-charging and all-solid-state battery applications. Our research highlights that chasing maximum capacity isn't the only way to build better batteries; balancing kinetic properties is just as crucial. We firmly believe Li₂FeCl₄ is poised to be a strong contender in next-generation battery technologies. Read our full findings here: pubs.acs.org/amrcda/article/…

🔬 What if we could watch photocatalysis happen—one catalyst at a time and in real time? see our new article in Chem "Single-catalyst operando photoluminescence spectroscopy of perovskite quantum-dot-driven photoredox reactions" We use an individual perovskite quantum dot simultaneously as: ✨ a quantum emitter ⚗️ a single photocatalyst 👁️ an operando probe of its own catalytic activity Remarkably, these perovskite QDs are sufficiently robust to operate under realistic reaction conditions while revealing charge-transfer dynamics, particle-to-particle heterogeneity, and degradation at the few-atom level. These insights are fundamentally inaccessible through conventional ensemble measurements sciencedirect.com/science/ar…

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🔋 What if an electrolyte salt could become the energy-storing material? In our new article, we show how lithium perchlorate (LiClO₄) can undergo an 8-electron reduction—unlocked through electrochemically coupled oxygen-atom transfer. ⚙️ Carbon-supported Fe nanoparticles play a double role: oxygen-transfer catalyst + conversion-type cathode material. ⚡ >50% LiClO₄ conversion ⚡ 1,150 mAh g⁻¹ capacity ⚡ 1,950 Wh kg⁻¹ (per kg of LiClO₄) It is a proof of concept—not yet a practical battery—but it opens a new route toward harvesting the largely unexplored energy of p-block oxoanions. Much inspired by discussions with Prof. Reinhard Nesper (ETH emeritus) over a decade ago. pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jac…