3D Organic–Inorganic Perovskite Ferroelastic Materials with Two Ferroelastic Phases: [Et3P(CH2)2F][Mn(dca)3] and [Et3P(CH2)2Cl][Mn(dca)3]

Organic–inorganic hybrid perovskite-type multiferroics have attracted considerable research interest owing to their fundamental scientific significance and promising technological applications in sensors and multiple-state memories. The recent achievements with divalent metal dicyanamide compounds revealed such malleable frameworks as a unique platform for developing novel functional materials. Herein, two 3D organic–inorganic hybrid perovskites [Et₃P(CH₂)₂F][Mn(dca)₃] ( 1 ) and [Et₃P(CH₂)₂Cl][Mn(dca)₃] ( 2 ) (dca=dicyanamide, N(CN)₂⁻) are presented. Accompanying the sequential phase transitions, they display a broad range of intriguing physical properties, including above room temperature ferroelastic behavior, switchable dielectricity, and low-temperature antiferromagnetic ordering (T_c=2.4 K for both 1 and 2 ). It is also worth noting that the spontaneous strain value of 1 is far beyond that of 2 in the first ferroelastic phase, as a result of the precise halogen substitution. From the point view of molecular design, this work should inspire further exploration of multifunctional molecular materials with desirable properties.     

Porous Molybdenum Carbide Nanostructures Synthesized on Carbon Cloth by CVD for Efficient Hydrogen Production

Molybdenum carbide (Mo₂C) is a promising noble-metal-free electrocatalyst for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), due to its structural and electronic merits, such as high conductivity, metallic band states and wide pH applicability. Here, a simple CVD process was developed for synthesis of a Mo₂C on carbon cloth (Mo₂C@CC) electrode with carbon cloth as carbon source and MoO₃ as the Mo precursor. XRD, Raman, XPS and SEM results of Mo₂C@CC with different amounts of MoO₃ and growth temperatures suggested a two-step synthetic mechanism, and porous Mo₂C nanostructures were obtained on carbon cloth with 50 mg MoO₃ at 850 °C (Mo₂C-850(50)). With the merits of unique porous nanostructures, a low overpotential of 72 mV at current density of 10 mA cm⁻² and a small Tafel slope of 52.8 mV dec⁻¹ was achieved for Mo₂C-850(50) in 1.0 m KOH. The dual role of carbon cloth as electrode and carbon source resulted into intimate adhesion of Mo₂C on carbon cloth, offering fast electron transfer at the interface. Cyclic voltammetry measurements for 5000 cycles revealed that Mo₂C@CC had excellent electrochemical stability. This work provides a novel strategy for synthesizing Mo₂C and other efficient carbide electrocatalysts for HER and other applications, such as supercapacitors and lithium-ion batteries.     

Advantageous Interfacial Effects of AgPd/g-C3N4 for Photocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution: Electronic Structure and H2O Dissociation

Bimetallic AgPd nanoparticles have been synthesized before, but the interfacial electronic effects of AgPd on the photocatalytic performance have been investigated less. In this work, the results of hydrogen evolution suggest that the bimetallic AgPd/g-C₃N₄ sample has superior activity to Ag/g-C₃N₄ and Pd/g-C₃N₄ photocatalysts. The UV/Vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, CO adsorption diffuse reflectance FTIR spectroscopy, and FTIR results demonstrate that in the AgPd/g-C₃N₄, the surface electronic structures of Pd and Ag are changed, which is beneficial for faster photogenerated electron transfer and greater H₂O molecule adsorption. In situ ESR spectra suggest that, under visible light irradiation, there is more H₂O dissociation to radical species on the AgPd/g-C₃N₄ photocatalyst. Furthermore, DFT calculations confirm the interfacial electronic effects of AgPd/g-C₃N₄, that is, Pd^δ−⋅⋅⋅Ag^δ+, and the activation energy of H₂O molecule dissociation on AgPd/g-C₃N₄ is the lowest, which is the main contributor to the enhanced photocatalytic H₂ evolution.     

A Near-Infrared-Controllable Artificial Metalloprotease Used for Degrading Amyloid-β Monomers and Aggregates

Proteolysis of amyloid-β (Aβ) is a promising approach against Alzheimer's disease. However, it is not feasible to employ natural hydrolases directly because of their cumbersome preparation and purification, poor stability, and hazardous immunogenicity. Therefore, artificial enzymes have been developed as potential alternatives to natural hydrolases. Since specific cleavage sites of Aβ are usually embedded inside the β-sheet structures that restrict access by artificial enzymes, this strongly hinders their efficiency for practical applications. Herein, we construct a NIR (near-IR) controllable artificial metalloprotease (MoS₂-Co) using a molybdenum disulfide nanosheet (MoS₂) and a cobalt complex of 1,4,7,10-tetraazacyclododecane-1,4,7,10-tetraacetic acid (Codota). Evidenced by detailed experimental and theoretical studies, the NIR-enhanced MoS₂-Co can circumvent the restriction by simultaneously inhibition of β-sheet formation and destroying β-sheet structures of the preformed Aβ aggregates in living cell. Furthermore, our designed MoS₂-Co is an easy to graft Aβ-target agent that prevents misdirected or undesirable hydrolysis reactions, and has been demonstrated to cross the blood brain barrier. This method can be adapted for hydrolysis of other kinds of amyloids.     

The Linear Optical Unambiguous Discrimination of Hyperentangled Bell States Assisted by Time Bin

A linear optical unambiguous discrimination of hyperentangled Bell states is proposed for two‐photon systems entangled in both the polarization and momentum degrees of freedom (DOFs) assisted by time bin. This unambiguous discrimination scheme can completely identify 16 orthogonal hyperentangled Bell states using only linear optical elements, where the function of the auxiliary entangled Bell state is replaced by time bin. Moreover, the possibility of extending this scheme for distinguishing hyperentangled Bell states in n DOFs is discussed, and it shows that $2^{n+k+1}$ hyperentangled Bell states in n ( $n\ge 2$) DOFs can be distinguished with k ( $k<n$) auxiliary entangled states of additional DOFs by introducing a time delay, which decreases the auxiliary entanglement resource required for unambiguous discrimination of hyperentangled Bell state. Therefore, this scheme provides a new way for distinguishing hyperentangled states with current technology, which will extend the application of discrimination of hyperentangled states via linear optics to other quantum information protocols besides hyperdense coding schemes in the future.     

Control the self-assembly of fluorenone-based polycatenars by tuning chain length

Using Suzuki coupling reactions as key steps, a series of fluorenone-based polycatenars, consisting of a central 2,7-diphenyl-9-fluorenone core connected with the 3,4,5-trialkoxybenzoate unit via –COO- linkage at each side have been synthesized. Upon elongation of the terminal alkyl chain, these compounds self-assembled into mesophase sequence of Col_hex/p6mm - Cub_I/$\mathit{Pm}\overline{3}n$ in solid states as well as organogels with interesting morphologies varied from 3D helical fibers to spherical structures in solvents.     

Visual Speech Recognition with Lightweight Psychologically Motivated Gabor Features

Extraction of relevant lip features is of continuing interest in the visual speech domain. Using end-to-end feature extraction can produce good results, but at the cost of the results being difficult for humans to comprehend and relate to. We present a new, lightweight feature extraction approach, motivated by human-centric glimpse-based psychological research into facial barcodes, and demonstrate that these simple, easy to extract 3D geometric features (produced using Gabor-based image patches), can successfully be used for speech recognition with LSTM-based machine learning. This approach can successfully extract low dimensionality lip parameters with a minimum of processing. One key difference between using these Gabor-based features and using other features such as traditional DCT, or the current fashion for CNN features is that these are human-centric features that can be visualised and analysed by humans. This means that it is easier to explain and visualise the results. They can also be used for reliable speech recognition, as demonstrated using the Grid corpus. Results for overlapping speakers using our lightweight system gave a recognition rate of over 82%, which compares well to less explainable features in the literature.     

Photocurrent switching effect on BiVO4 electrodes and its application in development of photoelectrochemical glucose sensor

Journal of Solid State Electrochemistry - In this work, we reported the photocurrent switching effect on BiVO4 semiconductor as well as its application for construction of a new cathodic...     

Projection-based Consistent Test for Linear Regression Model with Missing Response and Covariates

Acta Mathematicae Applicatae Sinica, English Series - In recent years, there has been a large amount of literature on missing data. Most of them focus on situations where there is only missingness...