1D/3D Heterogeneous Assembling Body of Cobalt Nitrides for Highly Efficient Overall Hydrazine Splitting and Supercapacitors.

Herein, the construction of a heterostructured 1D/3D CoN-Co2 N@NF (nickel foam) electrode used for thermodynamically favorable hydrazine oxidation reaction (HzOR), as an alternative to sluggish anodic oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in water splitting for hydrogen production, is reported. The electrode exhibits remarkable catalytic activities, with an onset potential of -0.11 V in HzOR and -71 mV for a current density of 10 mA cm-2 in hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Consequently, an extraordinary low cell voltage of 53 mV is required to achieve 10 mA cm-2 for overall hydrazine splitting in a two-electrode system, demonstrating significant energy-saving advantages over conventional water splitting. The HzOR proceeds through the 4e- reaction pathway to release N2 while the 1e- pathway to emit NH3 is uncompetitive, as evidenced by differential electrochemical mass spectrometric measurements. The X-ray absorption spectroscopy, in situ Raman spectroscopy, and theoretical calculations identify cobalt nitrides rather than corresponding oxides/(oxy)hydroxides as catalytic species for HzOR and illustrate advantages of heterostructured CoN-Co2 N in optimizing adsorption energies of intermediates/reagents and promoting catalytic activities toward both HzOR and HER. The CoN-Co2 N@NF is also an excellent supercapacitive material, exhibiting an increased specific capacity (938 F g-1 at 1 A g-1 ) with excellent cycling stability (95.8%, 5000 cycles).

Iron-Cobalt-Cerium Multimetallic Oxides Derived from Prussian Blue Precursors: Enhanced Oxygen Evolution Electrocatalysis.

Exploring non-precious metal-based electrocatalysts is still challenging in 21st century. In this work, a series of hexagonal bipyramidal Ce-based PBA materials as precursors with different Fe/Co metal ratios, namely as CeFex Co1-x -PBA, are successfully constructed via co-precipitation method and converted into corresponding metal oxides (denoted as Fex Co1-x CeOy ) via thermal treatment. Then, they as electrocatalysts realize highly efficient oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Especially, as-synthesized Fe0.7 Co0.3 CeOy electrocatalyst shows very low overpotentials of 320 mV at the current density of 10 mA cm-2 and the Tafel slop of 98.4 mV dec-1 in 1 M KOH with remarkable durability for 24 h, which was due to the synergistic effect of multi-metal FeCoCe centers. Furthermore, a two-electrode cell of Fe0.7 Co0.3 CeOy /NF||Pt/C/NF realizes outstanding overall water splitting with a voltage of only 1.71 V at 10 mA cm-2 and remarkable long-term durability, that is even superior to benchmark IrO2 /NF||Pt/C/NF counterpart.

Vanadium-Based Trimetallic Metal-Organic-Framework Family as Extremely High-Performing and Ultrastable Electrocatalysts for Water Splitting.

This is the first time that the pore-space-partition (PSP) strategy is being successfully applied in the electrochemical field for water splitting, realizing the highly efficient construction of a series of ultrastable pristine MOF electrocatalysts. On integrating the vanadium-based trimetallic building cluster (M2V), the target M2V-MOFs exhibit excellent electrocatalytic activity for HER, OER, and water splitting. In particular, ultralow overpotentials of 314 and 198 mV for Fe2V-MOF as OER and HER electrocatalysts, respectively, can drive a current density of 10 mA cm-2. The fabricated Fe2V-MOF||Pt/C two-electrode configuration for the overall water splitting yields a current density of 10 mA cm-2 at only 1.6 V vs RHE, which is superior to that of the commercial IrO2||Pt/C couple. Notably, high structural and chemical stabilities still can be observed in alkaline condition. This work opens up an exciting pathway to design efficient and stable electrocatalysts based on pristine MOF by integrating the PSP strategy and multimetallic centers.

Indium-Based Metal-Organic Framework for Efficient Photocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution.

In this work, an indium-based metal-organic framework was successfully constructed, namely, as In-MOF, by elaborately selecting an InIII center with unique properties and a functional tetracarboxylic acid with unsaturated and open-coordinated nodes. Interestingly, the InIII center was connected to a single-metal-node-based porous three-dimensional pts net. Its structure was dentified by single-crystal and powder X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infrared, thermogravimetric analysis, etc. Considering the special luminescent characteristic of an indium-based framework, as-prepared In-MOF was explored as a photocatalyst for H2 production from water splitting. The testing results demonstrate that In-MOF as a promising photocatalyst with a suitable band gap realizes a H2 evolution efficiency of 777.65 µmol g-1 h-1.

MOF-Derived Bimetallic CoFe-PBA Composites as Highly Selective and Sensitive Electrochemical Sensors for Hydrogen Peroxide and Nonenzymatic Glucose in Human Serum.

The fabrication of two-dimensional (2D) metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and Prussian blue analogues (PBAs) combines the advantages of 2D materials, MOFs and PBAs, resolving the poor electronic conductivity and slow diffusion of MOF materials for electrochemical applications. In this work, 2D leaflike zeolitic imidazolate frameworks (Co-ZIF and Fe-ZIF) as sacrificial templates are in situ converted into PBAs, realizing the successful fabrication of PBA/ZIF nanocomposites on nickel foam (NF), namely, CoCo-PBA/Co-ZIF/NF, FeFe-PBA/Fe-ZIF/NF, CoFe-PBA/Co-ZIF/NF, and Fe/CoCo-PBA/Co-ZIF/NF. Such fabrication can effectively reduce transfer resistance and greatly enhance electron- and mass-transfer efficiency due to the electrochemically active PBA particles and NF substrate. These fabricated electrodes as multifunctional sensors achieve highly selective and sensitive glucose and H2O2 biosensing with a very wide detective linear range, extremely low limit of detection (LOD), and good stability. Among them, CoFe-PBA/Co-ZIF/NF exhibits the best sensing performance with a very wide linear range from 1.4 µM to 1.5 mM, a high sensitivity of 5270 µA mM-1 cm-2, a low LOD of 0.02 µM (S/N = 3), and remarkable stability and selectivity toward glucose. What is more, it can realize excellent detection of glucose in human serum, demonstrating its practical applications. Furthermore, this material as a multifunctional electrochemical sensor also manifests superior detection performance against hydrogen peroxide with a wide linear range of 0.2-6.0 mM, a high sensitivity of 196 µA mM-1 cm-2, and a low limit of detection of 1.08 nM (S/N = 3). The sensing mechanism for enhanced performance for glucose and H2O2 is discussed and proved by experiments in detail.

Iron-Based Metal-Organic Framework System as an Efficient Bifunctional Electrocatalyst for Oxygen Evolution and Hydrogen Evolution Reactions.

The fabrication of highly efficient and sustainable electrocatalysts used for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is exceedingly challenging and warranted for overall water splitting. In this work, we successfully synthesized a series of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), namely, as Fe2M-MOF (M = Fe, Co, Ni, Zn, Mn; H4L = 3,3,5,5'-azoxybenzenetetracarboxylic acid) under a simple and mild condition, in which the Fe3 cluster as a basic building unit was replaced by the second kind of metal center; at the same time, a redox-active organic linker was adopted. The Fe2M-MOF system as a multifunctional catalyst realizes great improvement of the OER and HER performances. Among of them, the Fe2Co-MOF catalyst exhibits an extremely low overpotential of 339 mV at a current density of 10 mA cm-2 and a very small Tafel slope of 36.2 mV dec-1 in an alkaline electrolyte for OER. This result has far exceeded the commercial catalyst IrO2. Meanwhile, Fe2Zn-MOF manifests excellent HER activity with a small overpotential of 221 mV at 10 mA cm-2 and a low Tafel slope of 174 mV dec-1. In addition, the good long-term stability for these catalysts can be evaluated under working conditions. Systematic investigations are used to explain the enhanced electrocatalytic mechanism. In conclusion, we provide a simple and effective strategy for the preparation of multifunctional catalysts for energy conversion applications based on a pristine MOF material with redox-active metal centers and organic linkers.

Rationally designed trimetallic Prussian blue analogues on LDH/Ni foam for high performance supercapacitors.

Rational design of a Prussian blue analogue (PBA)@Ni-Co layered double hydroxide (NiCo-LDH) nanocomposite electrode material is vitally important for synthesizing high-performance supercapacitor electrodes. In this work, such nanocomposite electrode materials were successfully fabricated by a facile hydrothermal method. Firstly, three-dimensional (3D) regulated NiCo-LDH nanosheets with high interlayer space were grown on nickel foam under mild synthetic conditions. Then these nanosheets as a precursor were in situ converted into the target PBA@NiCo-LDH/NF nanocomposite electrode by a facile thermal ion-exchange reaction with potassium ferricyanide (K3[Fe(CN)6]). A series of PBA@NiCo-LDH/NF nanocomposite electrodes were fabricated with different ratios of Ni and Co and reaction temperatures. Their structures and morphologies were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), FT-IR and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Electrochemical investigation reveals that the PBA@Ni0.4Co0.6-LDH electrode exhibits the best electrochemical performance with an area specific capacitance of 2004.26 mF cm-2 at 1 mA cm-2, which is much higher (about three times) than the properties of each single component. All results demonstrate that (1) high-performance composite electrodes can be effectively fabricated and (2) fabrication of such composites is highly necessary and important.

[Effects of penetration enhancers on percutaneous permeability of geniposide in Xiao'er Ninhuang tuire cataplasms].

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the different permeation enhancers on the transdermal permeation of Xiao'er Niuhuang tuire cataplasms (XNTC). METHOD: Using improved franz-type diffusion cell with excised rat skin in vitro as the transdermal barrier, the content of permeated geniposide was determined by HPLC to study the kinetic parameters such as cumulative permeation quantity and permeation rate. RESULT: The result showed that the process of penetrating of geniposide in XNTC through skin could be in accordance with zero-rade releasing equation and XNTC was stable during the course of experiment. CONCLUSION: 5% Propylene glycol (PG)-azone (2:3) has the best permeation-enhancing effect, and the results provided a primary basis for the future research on Xiao'er Niuhuang tuire cataplasms.