Co3O4 Supported on Graphene-like Carbon by One-Step Calcination of Cobalt Phthalocyanine for Efficient Oxygen Reduction Reaction under Alkaline Medium.

Exploiting cost-effective and durable non-platinum electrocatalysts for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is of great significance for the development of abundant renewable energy conversion and storage technologies. Herein, a series of Co3O4 supported on graphene-like carbon (Co3O4/C) samples were firstly effectively synthesized by one-step calcination of cobalt phthalocyanine and their electrocatalytic performances were measured for ORR under an alkaline medium. By systematically adjusting the calcination temperature of cobalt phthalocyanine, we found that the material pyrolyzed at 750 °C (Co3O4/C-750) shows the best ORR electrocatalytic performance (half-wave potentials of 0.77 V (vs. RHE) in 0.1 M KOH) among all the control samples. Moreover, it displays better stability and superior methanol tolerance than commercial 20% Pt/C. The further electrochemical test results reveal that the process is close in characteristics to the four-electron ORR process on Co3O4/C-750. In addition, Co3O4/C-750 applied in the zinc-air battery presents 1.34 V of open circuit potential. Based on all the characterizations, the enhanced electrocatalytic performances of Co3O4/C-750 composite should be ascribed to the synergistic effect between Co3O4 and the graphene-like carbon layer structure produced by pyrolysis of cobalt phthalocyanine, as well as its high specific surface area.

Crack-Across-Pore Enabled High-Performance Flexible Pressure Sensors for Deep Neural Network Enhanced Sensing and Human Action Recognition.

Flexible pressure sensors with high sensitivity over a broad pressure range are highly desired, yet challenging to build to meet the requirements of practical applications in daily activities and more significant in some extreme environments. This work demonstrates a thin, lightweight, and high-performance pressure sensor based on flexible porous phenyl-silicone/functionalized carbon nanotube (PS/FCNT) film. The formed crack-across-pore endows the pressure sensor with high sensitivity of 19.77 kPa-1 and 1.6 kPa-1 in the linear range of 0-33 kPa and 0.2-2 MPa, respectively, as well as ultralow detection limit (∼1.3 Pa). Furthermore, the resulting pressure sensor possesses a low fatigue over 4000 loading/unloading cycles even under a high pressure of 2 MPa and excellent durability (>6000 cycles) after heating at high temperature (200 °C), attributed to the strong chemical bonding between PS and FCNT, excellent mechanical stability, and high temperature resistance of PS/FCNT film. These superior properties set a foundation for applying the single sensor device in detecting diverse stimuli from the very low to high pressure range, including weak airflow, sway, vibrations, biophysical signal monitoring, and even car pressure. Besides, a deep neural network based on transformer (TRM) has been engaged for human action recognition with an overall classification rate of 94.96% on six human actions, offering high accuracy in real-time practical scenarios.