Latest ArticlesDeveloping high-efficiency and robust durability electrocatalyst for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in water electrolysis functions as a crucial role for the construction of green hydrogen economy, herein, ultrafine W-doped vanadium nitride nanoparticles anchored on N-doped graphitic carbon framework (WVN@NGC) are synthesized through a one-step simple pyrolysis protocol. Owing to the enlarged catalytically active sites, enhanced electrical conductivity and optimized electronic structure, the resultant VN/WN@NGC delivered the prominent HER performance with overpotentials of 143 mV and 158 mV at 10 mA/cm2 in acid and alkaline media, respectively, accompanied by the long-term stability for at least 50 h. This work highlights a novel strategy for a metal-triggered modulation of nitride-based HER electrocatalyst for sustainable energy conversion device.
Bromate formation has been found in the SO4•−-based oxidation processes, but previous studies primarily focused on the bromate formation in the homogeneous SO4•−-based oxidation processes. The kinetics and mechanisms of bromate formation are poorly understood in the heterogeneous SO4•−-based oxidation processes, although which have been widely studied in the eliminations of micropollutants. In this work, we found that the presence of CuO, a common heterogeneous catalyst of peroxymonosulfate (PMS), appreciably enhanced the bromate formation from the oxidation of bromide by PMS. The conversion ratio of bromide to bromate achieved over 85% within 10 min in this process. CuO was demonstrated to play a multiple role in the bromate formation: (1) catalyzed PMS to generate SO4•−, which then oxidizes bromide to bromate; (2) catalyzed the formed free bromine to disproportionate to bromate; (3) catalyzed the formed free bromine to decomposed back into bromide. In the CuO-PMS-Br system, bromate formation increases with increasing CuO dosages, initial CuO and bromide concentrations, but decreases with increasing bicarbonate concentrations. The presence of NOM (natural organic matter) resulted in a lower formed bromate accompanied with organic bromine formation. Notably, CuO catalyzes PMS to transform more than 70% of initial bromide to bromate even after recycled used for six times. The formation of bromate in the PMS catalysis by CuO system was also confirmed in real water.
A dual emission sensing film has been prepared for colorimetric temperature sensing using CsPbBr3 perovskite nanocrystals (CsPbBr3 NCs) and manganese doped potassium fluorosilicate (K2SiF6: Mn4+, KSF) encapsulated in polystyrene by a microencapsulation strategy. The CsPbBr3-KSF-PS film shows good temperature sensing response from 30 ℃ to 70 ℃, with a relative temperature sensitivity (Sr) up to 10.31% ℃−1 at 45 ℃. Meanwhile, the film maintains more than 95% intensity after 6 heating-cooling cycles and keeps its fluorescence characteristics after 3 months. The film can be used to monitor temperature change by naked eye under a UV lamp. In particular, the temperature discoloration point of the sensing film can be controlled by the ratio change of CsPbBr3: KSF to expand its applications. The study of the CsPbBr3-KSF-PS sensing mechanism in this work is helpful to provide effective strategies for the design of reliable, high sensitivity and stable temperature sensing system using CsPbBr3 NCs.
Molecular oxygen (O2) is activated to reactive oxygen species (ROS) by transferring energy and carriers in the photocatalytic process, which plays an important role in environmental remediation. Herein, Cs-doped carbon nitride (CN-xCs, x = 0.2, 0.8, 1) was prepared by CsCl directly inducing the structural reconstruction of carbon nitride (CN), which had obvious molecular oxygen activation ability to promote tetracycline (TC) degradation. Besides, we explored the influence of Cs doping concentration. As a consequence, the doping concentration of Cs was an important factor affecting the activation of O2, which could cause changes in the physical and chemical structure of CN, make O enter the CN structure, form N vacancy defects and cyano groups. In addition, a proper amount of Cs doping could reduce the band gap value, increase the light absorption range, have better charge separation and transfer performance, which could remarkably promote the activation of O2. Benefiting from these advantages, CN-0.8Cs could generate a higher concentration of superoxide radicals (•O2−, 179.30 µmol/L), which was much higher than CN (6.22 µmol/L). Therefore, it exhibited excellent TC degradation photocatalytic performance, and the rate constant k of TC degradation was 0.020 min−1, which was 6.7 times the degradation rate of CN (k = 0.0030 min−1). Furthermore, the possible degradation pathways of TC were proposed based on the results of HPLC-MS.
Exploring efficient oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) electrocatalysts is crucial for developing water splitting devices. The composition and structure of catalysts are of great importance for catalytic performance. In this work, a heterogeneous Ru modified strategy is engineered to improve the catalytic performance of porous NiCo2O4 nanosheets (NSs). Profiting from favorable elements composition and optimized structure property of decreased charge transfer barrier, more accessible active sites and increased oxygen vacancy concentration, the Ru-NiCo2O4 NSs exhibits excellent OER activity with a low overpotential of 230 mV to reach the current density of 10 mA/cm2 and decent durability. Furthermore, Ru-NiCo2O4 NSs show superior HER activity than the pristine NiCo2O4 NSs, as well. When assembling Ru-NiCo2O4 NSs couple as an alkaline water electrolyzer, a cell voltage of 1.60 V can deliver the current density of 10 mA/cm2. This work provides feasible guidance for improving the catalytic performance of spinel-based oxides.
Fluorenylmethyloxycarbonyl (Fmoc)-protected amino acids are effective building blocks in self-assembled architectures at hierarchical levels, which however show limited luminescent properties and chiroptical activities. Here we introduce a charge-transfer strategy to build two-component luminescent materials with emerged circularly polarized luminescence properties. A library of Fmoc-amino acids was built, which selectively form charge-transfer complexes with the electron-deficient acceptor. Embedding in amorphous polymer matrix or physical grinding could trigger the charge-transfer luminescence with adjusted wavelengths in a general manner. X-ray diffraction results suggest the multiple binding modes between donor and acceptor. And, the solution-processed coassembly could selectively exhibit circularly polarized luminescence with high dissymmetry g-factors. This work illustrates a noncovalent charge-transfer strategy to construct luminescent and chiroptical organic composites based on the easy-accessible and economic chiral N-terminal aromatic amino acids.
Despite the various synthesis approachs to obtain luminous carbon dots (CDs), it is still quite challenging to construct the efficient electrochemiluminescence (ECL) owing to their low ECL reactivity and easy agglomeration. Herein, an efficient and concise ECL system was skillfully constructed by taking advantage of the nitrogen and sulfur co-doped CDs (N, S-CDs) with surfaces rich in hydrazide groups as luminophors to emit intense ECL, and metal-organic framework (MOF) as the matrix to confine CDs in its nanospace. Surprisingly, the proposed CDs assembled MOF (CDs/ZIF-8) enhanced anodic ECL signal up to 250% of pure CDs under the exogenous coreactant-free condition. As a proof of concept, the highly sensitive detection of uric acid (UA) was realized by the constructed ECL platform with a low detection limit of 3.52 nmol/L ranging from 10 nmol/L to 50 µmol/L. This work expanded ideas for the application of pore confinement effect, and provided references for the detection of disease biomarkers of gout and hyperuricemia.
Typically, rational interfacial engineering can effectively modify the adsorption energy of active hydrogen molecules to improve water splitting efficiency. NiFe layered double hydroxide (NiFe LDH) composite, an efficient oxygen evolution reaction (OER) catalyst, suffers from slow hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) kinetics, restricting its application for overall water splitting. Herein, we construct the hierarchical MoS2/NiFe LDH nanosheets with a heterogeneous interface used for HER and OER. Benefiting the hierarchical heterogeneous interface optimized hydrogen Gibbs free energy, tens of exposed active sites, rapid mass- and charge-transfer processes, the MoS2/NiFe LDH displays a highly efficient synergistic electrocatalytic effect. The MoS2/NiFe LDH electrode in 1 mol/L KOH exhibits excellent HER activity, only 98 mV overpotential at 10 mA/cm2. Significantly, when it assembled as anode and cathode for overall water splitting, only 1.61 V cell voltage was required to achieve 10 mA/cm2 with excellent durability (50 h).
The low-cost CuBr-promoted domino Biginelli reaction among readily available ketones, salicylaldehyde derivatives and 3-amino-1, 2, 4-triazole was studied under solvothermal conditions, giving the novel bridged polyheterocycles bearing two or three stereocenters depending on the starting ketones. This multicomponent reaction proceeded with high diastereoselectivity (dr > 20:1) based on a combined 1H NMR, crystallographic and supercritical fluid chromatographic (SFC) analysis of the product. Time-dependent high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) was performed to track the reaction process, and several key intermediates were identified, leading to the drawing of a plausible reaction mechanism. Density functional theory (DFT) calculation was supplemented, and two reaction pathways were differentiated. Moreover, in vitro antitumor activity was evaluated using HeLa and HepG2 cell lines, and two of these polyheterocycles demonstrated promising activities against HepG2 cells with EC50 down to 10 µmol/L. Additionally, ESI-MS/MS studies on all the polyheterocycles suggest a common fragmentation pathway (loss of one molecule of amino-triazole) they shared, providing the first-hand fragmentation rules for future rapid structural identification of them. The multicomponent domino reaction presented here may offer prospects for future design of more efficient strategies to access medicinally important bridged polyheterocycles.
Zn2Ti3O8, as a new type of anode material for lithium-ion batteries, is attracting enormous attention because of its low cost and excellent safety. Though decent capacities have been reported, the electrochemical reaction mechanism of Zn2Ti3O8 has rarely been studied. In this work, a porous Zn2Ti3O8 anode with considerably high capacity (421 mAh/g at 100 mA/g and 209 mAh/g at 5000 mA/g after 1500 cycles) was reported, which is even higher than ever reported titanium-based anodes materials including Li4Ti5O12, TiO2 and Li2ZnTi3O8. Here, for the first time, the accurate theoretical capacity of Zn2Ti3O8 was confirmed to be 266.4 mAh/g. It was also found that both intercalation reaction and pseudocapacitance contribute to the actual capacity of Zn2Ti3O8, making it possibly higher than the theoretical value. Most importantly, the porous structure of Zn2Ti3O8 not only promotes the intercalation reaction, but also induces high pseudocapacitance capacity (225.4 mAh/g), which boosts the reversible capacity. Therefore, it is the outstanding pseudocapacitance capacity of porous Zn2Ti3O8 that accounts for high actual capacity exceeding the theoretical one. This work elucidates the superiorities of porous structure and provides an example in designing high-performance electrodes for lithium-ion batteries.
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