Coexisting Single-Atomic Fe and Ni Sites on Hierarchically Ordered Porous Carbon as a Highly Efficient ORR Electrocatalyst.

The development of oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) electrocatalysts based on earth-abundant nonprecious materials is critically important for sustainable large-scale applications of fuel cells and metal-air batteries. Herein, a hetero-single-atom (h-SA) ORR electrocatalyst is presented, which has atomically dispersed Fe and Ni coanchored to a microsized nitrogen-doped graphitic carbon support with unique trimodal-porous structure configured by highly ordered macropores interconnected through mesopores. Extended X-ray absorption fine structure spectra confirm that Fe- and Ni-SAs are affixed to the carbon support via FeN and NiN coordination bonds.

Spin-wave propagation in α-FeO nanorods: the effect of confinement and disorder.

Spin-wave excitations in α-FeO nanorods were directly detected using time-of-flight inelastic neutron spectroscopy. The dispersive magnon features are compared with those in bulk α-FeO particles at various temperatures to highlight differences in mode intensity and width. The interchanged spectral intensities in the nanorod are a consequence of a suppressed spin orientation, and this is also evident in the neutron diffraction which demonstates that the weak ferromagnetic phase survives to 1.

A Liquid-Metal-Based Magnetoactive Slurry for Stimuli-Responsive Mechanically Adaptive Electrodes.

Electrical communication between a biological system and outside equipment allows one to monitor and influence the state of the tissue and nervous networks. As the bridge, bioelectrodes should possess both electrical conductivity and adaptive mechanical properties matching the target soft biosystem, but this is still a big challenge. A family of liquid-metal-based magnetoactive slurries (LMMSs) formed by dispersing magnetic iron particles in a Ga-based liquid metal (LM) matrix is reported here.

Enhanced energy transfer in heterogeneous nanocrystals for near infrared upconversion photocurrent generation.

The key to produce inorganic heterogeneous nanostructures, and to integrate multiple functionalities, is to enhance or at least retain the functionalities of different components of materials. However, this ideal scenario is often deteriorated at the interface of the heterogeneous nanostructures due to lattice mismatches, resulting in downgraded performance in most hybrid nanomaterials. Here, we report that there is a narrow window in controlling temperature in a Lewis acid-base reaction process to facilitate epitaxial alignment during the synthesis of hybrid nanomaterials.

New Insights into the structure of Pd-Au nanoparticles as revealed by aberration-corrected STEM.

Bimetallic nanoparticles of Au-Pd find important applications in catalysis. Their catalytic performance is directly related to the structure, alloy formation and variation of composition in the structure. A standard idea is that bimetallic nanoparticles can be either an alloy or a core shell structure.