Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) have drawn wide attention because of their incomparable advantages including low cost, easy to manufacture, environmental-friendly and high theoretical photoelectric conversion efficiency (PCE). However, traditional Pt CE materials are expensive, have a limited source, and are easily corroded by the I3−/I− electrolyte.

Dyeing industries use and discharge large volumes of water containing complex non-biodegradable recalcitrant organic and inorganic chemicals into the environment. The local dyeing wastewater have an offensive odour, highly coloured, low pH, and exposure to such wastewater can cause several diseases among which are cancer, skin irritation to mention but a few.

As the haze and other air pollutions getting more serious in cities and towns of China, most of the air pollutants were from the exhaust mission of the increasing number of vehicles. Thus, electric vehicles have been considered as a solution to control the air pollutant in rural as they don’t emit like traditional fossil-fuel vehicles.  Energy-storage devices such as rechargeable Li-ion batteries (LIBs), Na-ion batteries and supercapacitors are the core of electric vehicles.

Electrochemical hydrogen evolution from water splitting for hydrogen production as a sustainable and environmentally friendly strategy has drawn great attention in recent years. Currently Pt-based materials is the most efficient electrocatalysts toward hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), but the inexpensive cost has limited their widespread applications. Finding an efficient and inexpensive substitute HER catalysts is in need.

Photocatalytic fuel cell (PFC) has been considered as an alternative strategy due to efficient wastewater treatment and simultaneous energy recovery. However, conventional PFC system is enslaved to the unsatisfactory performance due to the limited surface area of electrodes where the main radical reactions principally occur. To resolve this issue, the radical chain-reaction is introduced into the PFC system with the addition of Fe2+/Fe3+ recycling catalysts.

Pesticides are crucial part of the farming industry as they can be used to control the insects and weeds for better crop yields. Therefore, the use of pesticides is essential in agricultural and veterinary practices to protect the crops worldwide. However, extensive usage of pesticides would cause toxicity of soils and environmental pollution.

As people pay more attention to indoor air pollution, feasible gas sensor that operates at room temperature has caught huge interest. Conventional materials applied in home gas sensing include polypyrrole (PPy), polythiophene (PTh), polyaniline (Pani).

Transition metal photodetectors operating from visible to ultraviolet (UV) have gained a lot scientific interest owing to its great potential to apply in industry. Tungsten is a transition metals, some tungsten oxides such as tungsten diselenide (WSe2) have excellent photo response properties to be used in photo detection.

Tungsten–copper (W–Cu) composites are extensively used in aerospace, military equipment, electronics, and chemical engineering because of their merits, like high electrical/thermal conductivity, low coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE), and outstanding strength/thermal properties of W.

Direct solar water splitting driven by inexpensive semiconducting materials is an attractive method to produce hydrogen as a zero-greenhouse gas emission fuel. During the past three decades, however, it has been shown that the main challenge consists in identifying materials that are stable under illumination in aqueous solutions, efficiently absorb sunlight, and induce efficient water splitting. Due to their inherent stability against oxidation and low cost, semiconducting oxides are promising materials to be employed in this process. Unfortunately, relatively fast recombination of photogenerated charge carriers, either in the bulk or at the surface, and slow charge transfer kinetics from the semiconductor to the electrolyte solution restrict their performance.