Latest ArticlesAmmonia (NH3), as an important chemical substance and clean energy carrier, plays an indispensable role in industrial and agricultural production. The electrocatalytic synthesis of NH3 under mild conditions has attracted worldwide attention in the energy field due to its environmental friendliness and cost efficiency, but unsatisfactory NH3 yields and Faradaic efficiencies are restricting its development. The introduction of defect has been demonstrated as a feasible way to overcome the disadvantages of electrochemistry, as it can regulate the electronic structure and modulate coordination environment of electrocatalysts, which further create active sites and enhance nitrogen adsorption. In this regard, it is necessary to understand the effects of various types of defects on electrocatalysts based on the latest progress in the defect engineering for nitrogen reduction reaction (NRR). In this review, the concept, classifications, and characterization of defects as well as the approaches to create them in electrocatalysts are firstly discussed. Then, certain types of defects (vacancy, dopant, amorphism, edge/corner, and porousness) affecting the performances of various electrocatalysts are further described. Finally, the summary and challenges of electrocatalytic ammonia synthesis are proposed to design advanced electrocatalysts with high efficiency.
Developing sustainable and powerful heterogeneous catalytic systems to convert sulfides into high-value sulfoxide products has become a particularly appealing field and an arduous challenge. In this work, two porous polyoxometalate-pillared metal-organic frameworks, formulated as H3n[Cu3(pidc)2(H2O)2.5]2[PW12O40]n·xH2O (n = 1.5, x = 6 for 1, n = 1, x = 12 for 2; and H3pidc = 2-(3-pyridinyl)-1H-imidazole-4,5-dicarboxylic acid), were consciously manufacture and employed for heterogeneously catalyzed sulfide-sulfoxide transformation. Structural analysis shows that 1 and 2 exhibit similar porous frameworks with nearly identical two-dimensional metal-organic layers further pillared by tetradentate POM ligands with different coordination modes, which also result in the porosity of 1 being almost twice that of 2. In catalyzing the conversion of methyl phenyl sulfide (MPS) to methyl phenyl sulfoxide (MPSO), 1 can convert nearly 100% of MPS into MPSO within 30 min, while 2 achieved the similar results requires 50 min. The higher activity of 1 may be attributed to its larger channel that can provide more active sites and more efficient mass transfer process. Systematic structure-activity analyses and mechanistic studies revealed dual-reaction pathways driven by POM sites and metal sites assisted by the structural microenvironment.
Diabetic patients often have problems such as residual tumor and wound infection after tumor resection, causing severe clinical problems. It is urgent to develop effective therapies to reach oncotherapy/anti-infection/promotion of wound healing combined treatment. Herein, we propose CS/MnO2-GOx (CMGOx) nanocatalysts for the specific catalytic generation of •OH to inhibit tumors and bacteria in a hyperglycemic environment. The good biocompatible chitosan (CS), as a carrier for the catalyst, exhibits excellent antibacterial effect as well as promotes wound healing. Glucose oxidase (GOx) is loaded on the surface of CS nanoparticles to generate H2O2 and gluconic acid by consuming glucose (starvation therapy, ST) and O2. The MnO2 depletes glutathione (GSH) to produce Mn2+, amplifying oxidative stress and further promoting the activity of Mn2+-mediated Fenton-like reaction to produce •OH (chemodynamic therapy, CDT) in weak acidic environment. Moreover, the produced gluconic acid lowers the pH of the environment, enhancing chemodynamic therapy (ECDT). The tumor cells and bacteria are efficiently eliminated by the synergistic effect of ST and ECDT. The MnO2 nanoparticles at neutral environment decomposes H2O2 into O2, which cooperate with CS to promote healing. The self-enhanced cascade reaction of CMGOx in situ exhibits excellent effects of antitumor/antibacterial therapy and promotion of wound healing, offering a promising integrated treatment for diabetic patients after tumor surgical resection.
We report that the photoinduced dynamics of the phytochrome chromophore is strongly dependent on the protonation/deprotonation states of the pyrrole ring. The on-the-fly surface hopping dynamics simulations were performed to study the photoisomerization of different protonation/deprotonation phytochrome chromophore models. The simulation results indicate that the deprotonations at the pyrrole rings significantly modify the photoinduced nonadiabatic dynamics, leading to distinctive population decay dynamics and different reaction channels. Such feature can be well explained by the formation of the different hydrogen bond network patterns. Therefore, the proper understanding of the photoisomerization mechanism of phytochrome chromophore must take the hydrogen bond network into account. This work provides the new insights into the photobiological functions of phytochrome chromophore and suggests the possible ideas to control of its photoconversion processes for further rational engineering in optical applications.
CO oxidation is a benchmark in heterogeneous catalysis for evaluation of redox catalysts due to its practical relevance in many applications and the fundamental problems associated with its very high activity at low temperatures. Among which, Co3O4 is one of the most active non-precious metal catalysts. Exposed crystal planes and cobalt sites are considered to be important for its high catalytic activity. Herein, we demonstrate an enhanced CO oxidation activity by a defect-rich mesoporous Co3O4 that prepared by a designed dual-template method. Two different kinds of silicas are used as hard-templates at the same time, resulting in a defect-rich mesoporous Co3O4 with a surface area as high as 169 m2/g. This catalyst exhibited a very high catalytic activity for low temperature CO oxidation with a light-off temperature at −73 ℃ under the space velocity of 80,000 mL h-1 gcat-1. Further studies reveal that the high surface area promotes the lattice oxygen mobility, surface rich of Co2+ species and active oxygen species are crucial for the high catalytic activity. Moreover, the dual-template approach paves a way towards the design and construction of high-surface-area mesoporous metal oxides for various applications.
Two triphenylamine-based star-type push-pull chromophores (T1, T2) were designed and synthesized. Triphenylamine serves as the central core and acts as an electron-donating group surrounded by electron-withdrawing pentafluorobenzene or N, N-dimethyl substituted tetrafluorobenzene, which are connected by ethylene bridges. Single-crystal X-ray diffraction confirmed the structures and molecular arrangement of two chromophores. The systematic photophysical research of T1 and T2 absorption characteristics was carried out to gain a better understanding of how structure-property relationships affect the observed nonlinear optical absorption phenomenon. Complementary calculations based on density functional theory (DFT) further confirmed the experimental results. Both chromophores exhibited excellent two-photon absorption (TPA) properties in CH2Cl2. Notably, T2 has more remarkable nonlinear optical absorption effects with the TPA cross-section up to 4.24 × 107 GM. By adjusting the electronic structures of the chromophores through introducing pentafluorobenzene or N, N-dimethyl as functional groups with different electron-donating or withdrawing behaviors, the TPA performance of the small organic molecule could be greatly enhanced. These molecular structures with push-pull systems were excellent candidates for different two-photon applications.
Long afterglow organic-inorganic hybrid materials have attracted much attention in recent years and are widely used in information security, biological imaging and many other fields. Since up-conversion long-persistence materials are promising for bio-optical imaging due to their high penetration depth and elimination of autofluorescence background, it is highly desirable to combine down-conversion and up-conversion pathways to obtain smart materials with excitation-dependent tunable room-temperature phosphorescence properties. In this work, a metal-organic framework (Zn-DCPS-BIMB), consisting of divalent zinc ions, o-bis(imidazol-1-ylmethyl)benzene and 4,4′-dicarboxydiphenylsulfone, is designed to stabilize triplet excitons, coordinate the emission of different ligands, and endow materials with tunable emission color and up-conversion properties via heavy atoms effects promoting single-triplet orbital coupling and intersystem crossing.
The development of low-cost and high-performance ZnO Schottky photodetectors (PDs) has drawn intensive attention, but still a challenge due to their poor conductivity and low light utilization efficiency. Here, we introduce Ti3C2TX into ZnO films to fabricate Schottky UV PDs via facile spin-coated method. The fabricated ZnO/Ti3C2TX/ZnO compound film shows outstanding performance on photocurrent, responsivity, noise equivalent power (NEP), normalized detection rate (D*), and linear dynamic region (LDR), compared with the original ZnO device. The photocurrent is significantly increased by 466%, and the responsivity is improved by one order of magnitude. In addition, it exhibits relatively low NEP (5.99 × 10−11 W), strong D* (2.53 × 109 Jones), and high LDR (28 dB). The superior performance is ascribed to the enhanced conductivity and light absorption of ZnO film after introduction of Ti3C2TX modification layer, leading to simultaneously faster electron transfer, lower the radiation recombination of electron and holes on the ZnO/Ti3C2TX/ZnO compound film. This work provides a facile way to develop low-cost and high-performance ZnO Schottky PDs.
Lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries have been regarded as the candidate for the next-generation energy storage system due to the high theoretical specific capacity (1675 mAh/g), energy density (2600 Wh/kg) and the abundance of elemental sulfur, but the application of Li-S batteries is impeded by a series of problems. Recently, all-solid-state Li-S batteries (ASSLSBs) have drawn great attention because many drawbacks such as safety issues caused by metallic lithium anodes and organic liquid electrolytes can be overcome through the use of solid-state electrolytes (SEs). However, not only the problems brought by sulfur cathodes still exist, but more trouble arouses from the interfaces between SEs and cathodes, hampering the practical application of ASSLSBs. Therefore, in order to deal with the problems, enormous endeavors have been done on ASSLSB cathodes during the past few decades, including engineering of cathode active materials, cathode host materials, cathode binder materials and cathode structures. In this review, the electrochemical mechanism and existing problems of ASSLSBs are briefly introduced. Subsequently, the strategies for developing cathode materials and designing cathode structures are presented. Then there follows a brief discussion of SE problems and expectations, and finally, the challenges and perspectives of ASSLSBs are summarized.
Synthetic antigen-encoding mRNA plays an increasingly significant role in tumor vaccine technology owing to its antigen-specific immune-activation. However, its immune efficacy is challenged by inferior delivery efficiency and demand for suitable adjuvants. Here, we develop a novel mRNA nanovaccine based on a multifunctional nanocapsule, which is a dual-adjuvant formulation composed of cytosine-phosphate-guanine motifs loaded tetrahedral framework nucleic acid (CpG-tFNA) and an immunopeptide murine β-defensin 2 (mDF2β). This mRNA nanovaccine successfully achieves intracellular delivery, antigen expression and presentation of dendritic cells, and proliferation of antigen-specific T cells. In a tumor prophylactic vaccination model, it exerts an excellent inhibitory effect on lymphoma occurrence through cellular immunity. This mRNA nanovaccine has promising prophylactic applications in tumors and many other diseases.
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