Heterostructured composite of NiFe-LDH nanosheets with Ti4O7 for oxygen evolution reaction

Developing oxygen evolution reaction (OER) electrocatalyst based on earth-abundant materials holds great promise for ascertaining water-splitting to surmount its deprived kinetics. In this regard, NiFe-LDH (layered double hydroxide) receives considerable attention owing to their layered structure. However, they still suffer from poor electronic conductivity and structural stability. We combined NiFe-LDH nanosheets with Magnéli phase Ti₄O₇ into a heterostructured composite. A series of analyses reveal that decorating Ti₄O₇ facilitates charge transfer to enhance the conductivity of NiFe-LDH-Ti₄O₇. During electrochemical measurement, Ni²⁺ is transformed to metastable Ni³⁺ (Ni (OH)→ NiOOH) before the OER onset potential. Thus, the presence of Ni³⁺ as the main active sites could improve the chemisorption of OH^? to facilitate OER. As a result, the NiFe-LDH-Ti₄O₇ catalyst delivers as low as onset potential (1.43 V). Combining the holey structure (NiFe-LDH and Ti₄O₇) and the defect engineering generated on NiFe-LDH-Ti₄O₇ as a synergistic effect improves the OER performance. The inclusion of Ti₄O₇ in the composite leads to more vacancy sites, as evidenced by the extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) analysis. The obtained defective structure with a low coordination environment would improve the electronic conductivity and facilitate the adsorption process of H₂O onto metal cations, thereby increasing the intrinsic catalytic activity of NiOOH. The strong coupling of NiFe-LDH and Ti₄O₇ also increases the stability, and the heterostructured composite helps maintain the structural robustness of the LDH.     

Synthesis and characterizations of Ho2O3 modified SrBi2Nb2O9 ceramics

SrBi_2-xHo_xNb₂O₉ (0?≤?x?≤?0.5) ceramics were prepared through the conventional solid state route. The materials have been characterized by XRD, FTIR and SEM. All compounds were pure and well crystallized. In FTIR spectroscopy, the spectral patterns of the crystal structures of these polyphases are unique and smoothly different from each other. The grains were prone to become spherical with increasing x. Dielectric and electrical properties of these materials as a function of temperature at different frequencies have been carried out. The dielectric constant and dielectric loss were found to decrease with an increase of the holmium concentration at room temperature. Reaching up to x?=?0.4 and x?=?0.5, the diffusivity increases, leading to the occurrence of relaxor behavior. 20–30 at.% Ho doping on the Bi-site can fill up the oxygen vacancies and decrease the AC conductivity. However, at higher doping levels greater than 40% holmium oxide, the AC conductivity is found to increase.     

A General Optimality Conditions for Stochastic Control Problems of Jump Diffusions

We consider a stochastic control problem where the system is governed by a non linear stochastic differential equation with jumps. The control is allowed to enter into both diffusion and jump terms. By only using the first order expansion and the associated adjoint equation, we establish necessary as well as sufficient optimality conditions of controls for relaxed controls, who are a measure-valued processes.     

Deacetylation Regioselective De Glycals

ABSTRACT

Hydrazine acetate is shown to effect selective deacetylation on peracetylated glycals like D-xylal, D-glucal, D-galactal and L-rhamnal. It is demonstrated that the observed selectivity on the -4 position cannot be explained by acetyl migration during the reaction.     

Structural and optical properties of a NaCl single crystal doped with CuO nanocrystals

A cupric oxide (CuO) nanocrystal-doped NaCl single crystal and a pure NaCl single crystal are grown by using the Czochralski (Cz) method. A number of techniques, including X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) analysis, Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, optical absorption in the UV-visible range, and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy are used to characterize the obtained NaCl and NaCl:CuO crystals. It is observed that the average radius of CuO crystallites in NaCl:CuO crystal is about 29.87 nm, as derived from the XRD data analysis. Moreover, FT-IR and Raman spectroscopy results confirm the existence of the monoclinic CuO phase in NaCl crystal. UV-visible absorption measurements indicate that the band gap of the NaCl:CuO crystal is 434 nm (2.85 eV), and it shows a significant amount of blue-shift (△Eg = 1 eV ) in the band gap energy of CuO, which is due to the quantum confinement effect exerted by the CuO nanocrystals. The PL spectrum of the NaCl:CuO shows a broad emission band centred at around 438 nm, which is consistent with the absorption measurement.     

Top quark FCNCs in extended Higgs sectors

The large number of top quarks produced at the LHC and possible future hadron colliders allows to study rare decays of this particle. In many well motivated models of new physics, for example in non-minimal composite-Higgs models, the existence of scalar singlets can induce new flavor-violating top decays surpassing the Higgs contribution by orders of magnitude. We study the discovery prospects of rare top decays within such models and develop new search strategies to test these interactions in top pair-produced events at the LHC. We demonstrate that scales as large as 10–50 TeV can be probed. Improvements by factors of \(\sim 1.5\) and \(\sim 3\) can be obtained at \(\sqrt{s} = 27\) TeV and \(\sqrt{s} = 100\) TeV colliders respectively.     

A review of transition metal‐based bifunctional oxygen electrocatalysts

Electrochemical energy storage and conversion devices play a key role in the development of clean, sustainable, and efficient energy systems to meet the sustainable growth of our society. However, challenging issues including the sluggish kinetics of oxygen electrode reactions involving the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) are present, limiting the implementation of devices such as metal‐air batteries, water electrolyzers, and regenerative fuel cells. In this review, various monometallic and bimetallic transition metal oxides (TMOs) and hydroxides are summarized in terms of their application for ORR/OER, in which the merits and demerits of various precious metal and carbon‐based metal oxide materials are discussed, with requirements for better electrocatalysts and catalyst support being introduced as well. Following this, different approaches to improve catalytic activity such as the introduction of doping and defects, the manipulation of crystal facets, and the engineering of supports, compositions, and morphologies are summarized in which TMOs with improved ORR/OER catalytic activities can be synthesized, further improving the speed, stability, and polarization of electrochemical energy storage and conversion devices. Finally, perspectives into the improvement of performance and the better understanding of ORR/OER mechanisms for bifunctional electrocatalysts using in situ spectroscopic techniques and density functional theory calculations are also discussed.