N,S-Atom-coordinated CoS trinary dopants within a porous graphene framework as efficient catalysts for oxygen reduction/evolution reactions.

The intrinsic instability and difficulty in controlling the uniform size distributions of cobalt sulfides greatly restrict their application for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) as a bifunctional electrocatalyst in regenerative fuel cells and rechargeable metal-air batteries. Herein, we synthesize a stable electrocatalyst of N,S-atom-coordinated Co9S8 trinary dopants within a porous graphene framework (Co9S8@NS-3DrGO), in which Co9S8 nanoparticles show uniform sizes and distributions. The stable Co9S8-based composites are fabricated by a facile soft template-assisted strategy, and the attraction of this method is that the intermediate of melamine formaldehyde resin (MFR) plays trifunctional roles, including (i) it acts as the templated bonding material to crosslink GO sheets together, (ii) it facilitates the formation of a core-shell architecture, and (iii) it acts as the N source for doping.

The enhanced alcohol-sensing response of ultrathin WO3 nanoplates.

Chemical sensors based on semiconducting metal oxide nanocrystals are of academic and practical significance in industrial processing and environment-related applications. Novel alcohol response sensors using two-dimensional WO(3) nanoplates as active elements have been investigated in this paper. Single-crystalline WO(3) nanoplates were synthesized through a topochemical approach on the basis of intercalation chemistry (Chen et al 2008 Small 4 1813).