Origins of Boosted Charge Storage on Heteroatom-Doped Carbons.

Although tremendous efforts have been devoted to understanding the origin of boosted charge storage on heteroatom-doped carbons, none of the present studies has shown a whole landscape. Herein, by both experimental evidence and theoretical simulation, it is demonstrated that heteroatom doping not only results in a broadened operating voltage, but also successfully promotes the specific capacitance in aqueous supercapacitors. In particular, the electrolyte cations adsorbed on heteroatom-doped carbon can effectively inhibit hydrogen evolution reaction, a key step of water decomposition during the charging process, which broadens the voltage window of aqueous electrolytes even beyond the thermodynamic limit of water (1.23 V). Furthermore, the reduced adsorption energy of heteroatom-doped carbon consequently leads to more stored cations on the heteroatom-doped carbon surface, thus yielding a boosted charge storage performance.

Research on drug-receptor interactions and prediction of drug activity via oriented immobilized receptor capillary electrophoresis.

Oriented covalent immobilized ß2 -adrenergic receptor (ß2 -AR) CE (OIRCE) was developed to determine the interactions between a set of natural extracts of Radix Paeoniae Rubra (NERPR) and ß2 -AR, and to predict the activity of NERPR. The inner capillary surface is chemically bonded with stable ß2 -AR coating via microwave-assisted technical synthesis. The modified capillaries were characterized via infrared spectroscopy and fluorescence microscopy. Furthermore, the bonding amounts of ß2 -AR were first obtained via fluorescence spectroscopy method. In determining the amount of bonded ß2 -AR, the regression equation A  =  576 707C + 35.449 and the correlation coefficient 0.9995 were obtained. This result revealed an excellent linear relationship in the range of 2 × 10(-4)  mg/mL to 1 × 10(-3)  mg/mL. The normalized capacity factor (KRCE ) was obtained using OIRCE in evaluating drug-receptor interactions. Related theories and equations were used to calculate KRCE values from apparent migration times of a solute and EOF. The order of KRCE and the binding constant (Kb ) values between drugs and ß2 -AR was well consistent. The results confirmed that the OIRCE and KRCE values can be effectually used to investigate drug-receptor interactions, and OIRCE has the potential to predict drug activity and to select leading compounds from natural chemicals.