In Situ Welding Ionic Conductive Breakpoints for Highly Reversible All-Solid-State Lithium-Sulfur Batteries.

Poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO)-based solid-state lithium-sulfur batteries (SSLSBs) have garnered considerable interest owing to their impressive energy density and high safety. However, the dissolved lithium polysulfide (LiPS) together with sluggish reaction kinetics disrupts the electrolyte network, bringing about ionic conductive breakpoints and severely limiting battery performance. To cure this, we propose an in situ welding strategy by introducing phosphorus pentasulfide (PS) as the welding filler into PEO-based solid cathodes.

Engineered Polymeric Carbon Nitride for Photocatalytic Diverse Functionalization of Electronic-Rich Alkenes.

Engineered polymeric carbon nitride represents a promising class of metal-free semiconductor photocatalysts for organic synthesis. Herein, we utilized engineered polymeric carbon nitride nanosheets, which exhibit an increased specific surface area and band gap due to enhanced quantum confinement from vacancy enrichment. These nanosheets serve as a heterogeneous organic semiconductor photocatalyst to facilitate diverse functionalizations of electron-rich alkenes, including arylsulfonylation, aminodifluoroalkylation, and oxytrifluoromethylation.

Unveiling the Role of Electric Double-Layer in Sulfur Catalysis for Batteries.

The metal-catalyzed sulfur reaction in lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries usually suffers from the strong binding of sulfur species to the catalyst surface, which destroys the electric double layer (EDL) region there. This causes rapid catalyst deactivation because it prevents the desorption of sulfur species and mass transport through the EDL is hindered. This work introduces a competitive adsorption factor (f) as a new indicator to quantify the competitive adsorption of sulfur species in the EDL and proposes an alloying method to change it by strengthening the p-d hybridization of alloying metals with electrolyte solvents.

Bacterial dispersal enhances the elimination of active fecal coliforms during vermicomposting of fruit and vegetable wastes: The overlooked role of earthworm mucus.

Earthworms play a pivotal role in the elimination of fecal coliforms during vermicomposting of fruit and vegetable waste (FVWs). However, the specific mechanisms underlying the action of earthworm mucus remain unclear. This study investigated the mechanisms of fecal coliform reduction related to earthworm mucus during FVWs vermicomposting by comparing treatments with and without earthworms.

Geminal-atom catalysis for cross-coupling.

Single-atom catalysts (SACs) have well-defined active sites, making them of potential interest for organic synthesis. However, the architecture of these mononuclear metal species stabilized on solid supports may not be optimal for catalysing complex molecular transformations owing to restricted spatial environment and electronic quantum states. Here we report a class of heterogeneous geminal-atom catalysts (GACs), which pair single-atom sites in specific coordination and spatial proximity.

Ferromagnetic single-atom spin catalyst for boosting water splitting.

Heterogeneous single-atom spin catalysts combined with magnetic fields provide a powerful means for accelerating chemical reactions with enhanced metal utilization and reaction efficiency. However, designing these catalysts remains challenging due to the need for a high density of atomically dispersed active sites with a short-range quantum spin exchange interaction and long-range ferromagnetic ordering. Here, we devised a scalable hydrothermal approach involving an operando acidic environment for synthesizing various single-atom spin catalysts with widely tunable substitutional magnetic atoms (M) in a MoS host.

N-doped carbon dots as robust fluorescent probes for the rapid detection of hypochlorite.

Great advances have been made in the development of carbon dot (CD)-based fluorescent materials for the detection of hypochlorite in the past few years. However, developing new CDs with high quantum yield (QY) for the rapid detection of hypochlorite and gaining a deeper insight into the detection mechanism still need to be further investigated. Herein, N-doped carbon dots (NCDs) with high QYs, which can reach as high as 67%, were efficiently prepared employing citric acid and -phenylenediamine as raw materials.

Successive Deprotonation Steering the Structural Evolution of Supramolecular Assemblies on Ag(111).

In this study, we demonstrate the structural evolution of a two-dimensional (2D) supramolecular assembly system, which is steered by the thermally activated deprotonation of the primary organic building blocks on a Ag(111) surface. Scanning tunneling microscopy revealed that a variety of structures, featuring distinct structural, chiral, and intermolecular bonding characters, emerged with the gradual thermal treatments. According to our structural analysis, in combination with density function theory calculations, the structural evolution can be attributed to the successive deprotonation of the organic building blocks due to the inductive effect.

On-Surface Synthesis of Giant Conjugated Macrocycles.

We have achieved an on-surface synthesis of giant conjugated macrocycles having a diameter of ≈7 nm and consisting of up to 30 subunits. The synthesis started with a debrominative coupling of the molecular precursors on a hot Ag(111) surface, leading to the formation of arched oligomeric chains and macrocycles. These products were revealed by scanning tunneling microscopy in combination with density functional theory to be covalent oligomers.

Syntheses of chlorogenin 6alpha-O-acyl-3-O-beta-chacotriosides and their antitumor activities.

Chlorogenin 3-O-beta-chacotrioside (1) and its 6alpha-O-acyl derivatives (2-6) were concisely synthesized. Introduction of a hydroxyl or acyloxy group onto the C-6 of the steroidal aglycone of dioscin decreased significantly the cytotoxicity of the parent saponin (dioscin).