Study on quality analysis of different species of Coptidis rhizome based on fingerprint-effect relationship.

INTRODUCTION: The quality evaluation of Coptidis rhizome (CR) is attributed to the origin and processing method, and this strategy of ignoring the bioactive components usually leads to biased quality analysis, which is difficult to indicate the clinical efficacy. OBJECTIVES: In order to evaluate the quality level of different species of CR, we collected 20 batches of CR and investigated the fingerprint-effect relationship. METHODS: High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) fingerprints of CR were established, and the fingerprint-effect relationship was explored using cluster analysis, principal component analysis, Pearson correlation analysis, grey relation analysis, and partial least squares regression. RESULTS: We have identified a total of 10 common peaks (1-10) with similarity scores above 0.96. The study on the relationship between spectra and potency further showed that the contents of peaks 8, 9, and 10 are potential key components. And based on a previous study, a method of one measurement and multiple evaluations of CR was established to achieve the goal of simplifying the analytical process and reducing costs. CONCLUSION: Through a combination of fingerprint analysis, antioxidant activity evaluation, fingerprint-efficacy relationship analysis, and simultaneous quantification of multiple components, a CR quality control index and method have been selected and established, which can also provide a more comprehensive quality evaluation for traditional Chinese medicine.

Confining nano-sized platinum in nitrogen doped ordered mesoporous carbon: An effective approach toward efficient and robust hydrogen evolution electrocatalyst.

Despite recent progress in the development of earth abundant electrochemical catalyst for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), Pt based materials still stand as the state of the art HER catalyst. Due to the high cost of Pt, it is desirable to increase the utilization efficiency of Pt in practical HER process to a realize cost effective hydrogen production. Herein, we repot a novel nitrogen doped ordered mesoporous carbon supported Pt (Pt@NOMC-A) catalyst with a low Pt loading of 7.2 wt% and show that the synergy between Pt nanoparticles and carbon support, as well as the physical confinement offered by the carbon support enhance the electrochemical performance of the novel catalyst. Pt@NOMC-A exhibits a low HER overpotential comparable with commercial 20 wt% Pt/C catalyst under acidic, neutral and alkaline condition. Furthermore, Pt@NOMC-A shows a superior electrochemical stability under working conditions suppressing that of commercial Pt/C catalyst.