Suppression of charge imbalance via Li+-Mn4+ co-incorporated Sr2YSbO6 red phosphors for warm w-LEDs

Mn⁴⁺-activated double perovskite phosphors with composition diversity have presented excellent luminescent performances. However, the charge imbalance between Mn⁴⁺ and matrix cations would increase non-radiative recombination and reduce the structural stability. Here, novel high-efficiency stable Li⁺/Mn⁴⁺ co-incorporated Sr₂YSbO₆ red phosphors are successfully synthesized via a solid-state reaction method for warm w-LEDs, where the Li⁺ ions have the effect of charge balance for Sr₂YSbO₆:Mn⁴⁺ and reduce the non-radiative energy transfer among Mn⁴⁺ ions. It is demonstrated that the substitution of Li⁺–Mn⁴⁺ pairs for Sb⁵⁺ can enhance the bonding with low-shifted diffraction peaks and high emission intensity, and prolong the decay lifetime, compared with those of Mn⁴⁺ single-doped ones. Impressively, the thermal stability is enhanced to 89.72% from 84.61% at the original value of 303 K. Finally, a w-LED device based on the optimal phosphor Sr₂YSbO₆:0.01Mn⁴⁺/0.01Li⁺ red component exhibits a correlated color temperature of 4487 K and color rendering index of 80.2. Therefore, the incorporated Li⁺ ions serve as both charge compensator and co-activator in Mn⁴⁺-activated double perovskite phosphors with the aim of high luminescent performance and thermal stability.     

Polymer Electrolytes – New Opportunities for the Development of Multivalent Ion Batteries

Batteries, as highly concerned energy conversion system, have a great development prospect in various fields, especially in the field of energy powered vehicles. Multivalent ion batteries are getting more attention due to their low cost, high abundance in earth crust, high capacity and safety compared with Lithium batteries. Despite above advantages, several problems still need to be solved before multivalent ion batteries achieve large-scale application, such as interfacial parasitic reaction, anode passivation, and dendrites. The replacement of liquid electrolytes with gel polymer electrolytes (GPEs) which pose high safety, high mechanical strength and simplified battery system, is an effective strategy to inhibit dendrite growth and improve electrochemical performance. This review mainly discusses the advantages and challenges of multivalent ion batteries including zinc, magnesium, calcium and aluminum batteries. Meanwhile, the major targets of this review are introducing the recent developments and making a summary of the future trends of GPEs in the multivalent ion batteries.     

Cu2O-Catalyzed Conversion of Benzyl Alcohols Into Aromatic Nitriles via the Complete Cleavage of the C≡N Triple Bond in the Cyanide Anion

Nitrogen transfer from cyanide anion to an aldehyde is emerging as a promising method for the synthesis of aromatic nitriles. However, this method still suffers from a disadvantage that a use of stoichiometric Cu(II) or Cu(I) salts is required to enable the reaction. As we report herein, we overcame this drawback and developed a catalytic method for nitrogen transfer from cyanide anion to an alcohol via the complete cleavage of the C≡N triple bond using phen/Cu₂O as the catalyst. The present condition allowed a series of benzyl alcohols to be smoothly converted into aromatic nitriles in moderate to high yields. In addition, the present method could be extended to the conversion of cinnamic alcohol to 3-phenylacrylonitrile.     

Driving Organic Nanocrystals Dissolution Through Electrochemistry

We have recently discussed how organic nanocrystal dissolution appears in different morphologies and the role of the solution pH in the crystal detriment process. We also highlighted the role of the local molecular chemistry in porphyrin nanocrystals having comparable structures: in water-based acid solutions, protonation of free-base porphyrin molecules is the driving force for crystal dissolution, whereas metal (Zn^II) porphyrin nanocrystals remain unperturbed. However, all porphyrin types, having an electron rich π-structure, can be electrochemically oxidized. In this scenario, a key question is: does electrochemistry represent a viable strategy to drive the dissolution of both free-base and metal porphyrin nanocrystals? In this work, by exploiting electrochemical atomic force microscopy (EC-AFM), we monitor in situ and in real time the dissolution of both free-base and metal porphyrin nanocrystals, as soon as molecules reach the oxidation potential, showing different regimes according to the applied EC potential.     

Palladium-based bimetallic catalysts for highly selective semihydrogenation of alkynes using ex situ generated hydrogen

Semihydrogenation of alkynes to alkenes is an important and fundamental reaction in many industrial and synthetic applications and often suffers low selectivity because of the overhydrogenation. Here, highly selective semihydrogenation of alkynes is achieved by using H₂ ex situ generated from formic acid dehydrogenation with palladium (Pd)-based bimetallic catalysts through a two-chamber reactor in this work, realizing efficient utilization of H₂ and selective production of alkenes under mild reaction conditions. The Pd-based bimetallic catalysts show excellent catalytic performances for semihydrogenation of alkynes (PdZn bimetallic catalyst) and dehydrogenation of formic acid (PdAg bimetallic catalyst) in the two-chamber reactor.     

Surface modification of PBO fibers with 2,2-Bis (3-amino-4-hydroxyphenyl) hexafluoropropane in supercritical carbon dioxide for enhancing interfacial strength

PBO fiber is one of the most promising reinforcements in resin matrix composite because of its excellent mechanical properties. However, the inert and smooth surfaces make it the poor interface adhesion with resin matrix, which seriously limits the application in composites. In this article, we report a method to modify the surface of PBO fibers with 2,2-Bis (3-amino-4-hydroxyphenyl) hexafluoropropane（BisAPAF）in supercritical CO₂ to enhance interfacial properties. Chemical structures, surface elemental composition and functional groups, and surface morphology were characterized by FT-IR spectrometer, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), respectively. The mechanical properties of the samples were tested by a tensile tester. Static contact angle and microdebonding tests were used to characterize the wetting ability and interfacial shear strength (IFSS) of the fiber and epoxy resin. The results showed that the BisAPAF could be solved in scCO₂ and introduced more groups, –NH₂, –OH, and –CF₃ on the fiber surface, resulting in the mechanical properties and the wettability of PBO fiber slightly improved. Moreover, the fiber surface roughness was also increased obviously. The IFSS between the modified PBO fiber and epoxy resin increased from 8.18 MPa to 31.4 MPa when the treating pressure was 14 MPa. In general, the method to modify PBO fibers surface using BisAPAF in scCO₂ can effectively improve their interfacial properties.     

Electrochemical determination of acetaminophen at a carbon electrode modified in the presence of β-cyclodextrin: role of the activated glassy carbon and the electropolymerised β-cyclodextrin

Acetaminophen is a well-known drug commonly used to provide pain relief, but it can also lead to acute liver failure at high concentrations. Therefore, there is considerable interest in monitoring its concentrations. Sensitive and selective acetaminophen electrochemical sensors were designed by cycling a glassy carbon electrode (GCE) to high potentials in the presence of β-CD in a phosphate electrolyte, or by simply activating the GCE electrode in the phosphate solution. Using cyclic voltammetry, adsorption-like voltammograms were recorded. The acetaminophen oxidation product, N-acetyl benzoquinone imine, was protected from hydrolysis, and this was attributed to the adsorption of acetaminophen at the modified GCE. The rate constants for the oxidation of acetaminophen were estimated as 4.3 × 10^–3 cm² s^–1 and 3.4 × 10^–3 cm² s^–1 for the β-CD-modified and -activated electrodes, respectively. Using differential pulse voltammetry, the limit of detection was calculated as 9.7 × 10^–8 M with a linear concentration range extending from 0.1 to 80 μM. Furthermore, good selectivity was achieved in the presence of caffeine, ascorbic acid and aspirin, enabling the determination of acetaminophen in a commercial tablet. Similar electrochemical data were obtained for both the β-CD-modified and activated GCE surfaces, suggesting that the enhanced detection of acetaminophen is connected mainly to the activation and oxidation of the GCE. Using SEM, EDX and FTIR, no evidence was obtained to indicate that the β-CD was electropolymerised at the GCE.

     

Flexible all-solid-state supercapacitor based on polyhedron C-ZIF-8/PANI composite synthesized by unipolar pulse electrodeposition method

Journal of Solid State Electrochemistry - In this work, the unipolar pulse electrodeposition (UPED) method is used to electrodeposit the conductive polyaniline (PANI) on the carbonized polyhedron...     

Pure Ion Chromatograms Combined with Advanced Machine Learning Methods Improve Accuracy of Discriminant Models in LC–MS-Based Untargeted Metabolomics

Untargeted metabolomics based on liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (LC–MS) can detect thousands of features in samples and produce highly complex datasets. The accurate extraction of meaningful features and the building of discriminant models are two crucial steps in the data analysis pipeline of untargeted metabolomics. In this study, pure ion chromatograms were extracted from a liquor dataset and left-sided colon cancer (LCC) dataset by K-means-clustering-based Pure Ion Chromatogram extraction method version 2.0 (KPIC2). Then, the nonlinear low-dimensional embedding by uniform manifold approximation and projection (UMAP) showed the separation of samples from different groups in reduced dimensions. The discriminant models were established by extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost) based on the features extracted by KPIC2. Results showed that features extracted by KPIC2 achieved 100% classification accuracy on the test sets of the liquor dataset and the LCC dataset, which demonstrated the rationality of the XGBoost model based on KPIC2 compared with the results of XCMS (92% and 96% for liquor and LCC datasets respectively). Finally, XGBoost can achieve better performance than the linear method and traditional nonlinear modeling methods on these datasets. UMAP and XGBoost are integrated into KPIC2 package to extend its performance in complex situations, which are not only able to effectively process nonlinear dataset but also can greatly improve the accuracy of data analysis in non-target metabolomics.     

负载型廉价金属催化剂在低温催化氧化甲醛中的应用

甲醛是室内常见的挥发性有机污染物之一,长期接触会严重危害人体健康。负载型廉价金属催化剂在甲醛去除和实际应用方面表现出优异性能,引起研究人员的广泛关注。本文阐述了低温条件下负载型廉价金属催化剂在甲醛热催化氧化、光催化氧化和等离子协同催化氧化方面的研究进展,介绍了甲醛低温催化的影响因素,并讨论了反应机理。反应条件、载体类型和制备方式是影响甲醛低温催化活性的重要因素。虽然负载型廉价金属催化剂在甲醛光催化氧化和热催化氧化方面均表现出良好性能,但仍须进一步探究提升其在可见光和室温下的催化活性。对于甲醛等离子协同催化氧化,降低反应过程所产生的副产物和能耗仍是研究重点。此外,本文还对负载型廉价金属催化剂在甲醛催化应用中的发展方向进行了展望。