The Advanced Multi‐functional Electrocatalyst Efficiently Built from Multi‐integrated Sites for Overall Water Splitting and Rechargeable Zinc‐air Battery

Exploration of cost‐effective, high‐performance and durable multifunctional electrocatalysts is of significant importance for renewable energy conversion and storage. In this work, a simple strategy is developed to tailor the nickel metal with the collaboration of nitrogen‐doped graphene and single‐walled carbon nanotubes. The resulted nickel catalyst exhibits superior trifunctional activities for oxygen evolution, hydrogen evolution and oxygen reduction reactions in the same electrolyte, even comparable to commercial Pt/C and RuO₂ respectively, which can be attributed to the synergistic advantages between nickel, nitrogen and carbon, mainly including abundant integrated active sites achieved by the irregular charge distribution among C?N and Ni?N coupling centers. Such remarkable effects on trifunctional catalysis elicit the efficient overall water splitting, and endow the assembled zinc‐air battery with a good performance. These highlight the metallic nickel as an advanced multifunctional electrocatalysts with integrated sites developed from the collaboration of two different carbon nanomaterials.     

Scaled‐Up Synthesis of Amorphous NiFeMo Oxides and Their Rapid Surface Reconstruction for Superior Oxygen Evolution Catalysis

The anode oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is known to largely limit the efficiency of electrolyzers owing to its sluggish kinetics. While crystalline metal oxides are promising as OER catalysts, their amorphous phases also show high activities. Efforts to produce amorphous metal oxides have progressed slowly, and how an amorphous structure benefits the catalytic performances remains elusive. Now the first scalable synthesis of amorphous NiFeMo oxide (up to 515 g in one batch) is presented with homogeneous elemental distribution via a facile supersaturated co‐precipitation method. In contrast to its crystalline counterpart, amorphous NiFeMo oxide undergoes a faster surface self‐reconstruction process during OER, forming a metal oxy(hydroxide) active layer with rich oxygen vacancies, leading to superior OER activity (280 mV overpotential at 10 mA cm^?2 in 0.1 m KOH). This opens up the potential of fast, facile, and scale‐up production of amorphous metal oxides for high‐performance OER catalysts.     

沉淀法高效制备聚多巴胺纳米粒子

为得到分散性和稳定性较好的聚多巴胺纳米粒子,利用“沉淀-再分散法”高效制备了聚多巴胺纳米粒子水分散液。 首先利用溶液氧化法制备了分散在水/乙醇中的聚多巴胺纳米粒子,然后向分散液中加入丙酮使聚多巴胺纳米粒子絮凝。 收集沉降物,用丙酮冲洗并干燥后,加水重新分散得到纯化的聚多巴胺纳米粒子水分散液。 丙酮沉淀法得到的聚多巴胺纳米粒子形貌规整,分散性好,粒径分布在250 nm左右,在水中具有良好的储存稳定性和光热性能,与传统的超速离心提纯法相比,产率可提高57.4%。 此方法为其之后在药物载体及光热治疗等方面的应用研究提供了便利。     

Improved electrochemical properties in the Li3Fe2(PO4)3 by titanium and vanadium doping

Ti⁴⁺ ions were introduced to the VO₄^3- substituted Li₃Fe₂(PO₄)₃ by sol-gel method. Simultaneous substitution of Ti⁴⁺ for Fe³⁺ and VO₄^3- for PO₄^3- in the Li₃Fe₂(PO₄)₃ resulted in a net improvement in the rate capability and cycling performance, as compared with the single Ti⁴⁺ or VO₄^3- substituted compound.     

生物化学中酶促"不可逆"反应及其相关问题辨析

在生物化学教学和研究中,一些酶促反应被归类为不可逆反应。然而,此处的"不可逆"与物理化学中的"不可逆"有所不同,这一表述本身常导致学生的困惑。不仅如此,"不可逆"的实际含义及其衍生的观念可能进一步使学生产生很多对基本生化反应过程的严重误解。本文以物理化学所定义的"不可逆"为准,重新讨论生物化学中所指"不可逆"的准确含义,并举例讨论了包括"速控步""限速酶""高能磷酸键"在内的若干因生物化学中"不可逆"的不准确定义造成的认知误区。     

Challenge and Solution of Characterizing Glass Transition Temperature for Conjugated Polymers by Differential Scanning Calorimetry

Thermomechanical properties of polymers highly depend on their glass transition temperature (T _g). Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) is commonly used to measure T _g of polymers. However, many conjugated polymers (CPs), especially donor–acceptor CPs (D–A CPs), do not show a clear glass transition when measured by conventional DSC using simple heat and cool scan. In this work, we discuss the origin of the difficulty for measuring T _g in such type of polymers. The changes in specific heat capacity (Δc _p) at T _g were accurately probed for a series of CPs by DSC. The results showed a significant decrease in Δc _p from flexible polymer (0.28 J g^?1 K^?1 for polystyrene) to rigid CPs (10^?3 J g^?1 K^?1 for a naphthalene diimide‐based D–A CP). When a conjugation breaker unit (flexible unit) is added to the D–A CPs, we observed restoration of the Δc _p at T _g by a factor of 10, confirming that backbone rigidity reduces the Δc _p. Additionally, an increase in the crystalline fraction of the CPs further reduces Δc _p. We conclude that the difficulties of determining T _g for CPs using DSC are mainly due to rigid backbone and semicrystalline nature. We also demonstrate that physical aging can be used on DSC to help locate and confirm the glass transition for D‐A CPs with weak transition signals. © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part B: Polym. Phys. 2019 , 57, 1635–1644     

Catalytic Conversion of Biomass-Derived Polyols into Para-xylene over SiO2-Modified Zeolites

This work proved that biomass-based polyols (sorbitol, xylitol, erythritol, glycerol and ethanediol) were able to be converted into high-value chemical (p-xylene) by catalytic cracking of polyols, alkylation of aromatics, and the isomerization of xylenes over the SiO₂-modified zeolites. Compared to the conventional HZSM-5 zeolite, the SiO₂-containing zeolites considerably increased the selectivity and yield of p-xylene due to the reduction of external surface acidity and the narrowing of pore entrance. The influences of the methanol additive, reaction temperature, and types of polyols on the selectivity and yield of p-xylene were investigated in detail. Catalytic cracking of polyols with methanol significantly enhanced the production of p-xylene by the alkylation of toluene with methanol. The highest p-xylene yield of 10.9 C-mol% with a p-xylene/xylenes ratio of 91.1% was obtained over the 15wt%SiO₂/HZSM-5 catalyst. The reaction pathway for the formation of p-xylene was addressed according to the study of the key reactions and the characterization of catalysts.     

Copper-Catalyzed Trifunctionalization of Alkynes: Rapid Formation of Oxindoles Bearing Geminal Diboronates

A copper-catalyzed trifunctionalization of alkynes that provides rapid access to oxindoles bearing a geminal diboronate side chain, highlighted by the simultaneous formation of one C−C bond and two C−B bonds, is reported. This new reaction features simple reaction conditions (ligand-free catalysis), a general substrate scope, and excellent chemoselectivity. Mechanistic study revealed a reaction sequence constituted by, in the order, borylation, intramolecular cross-coupling, hydroboration, which has been rarely documented.