Investigating advanced electrocatalysts is crucial for improving the efficacy of water splitting to generate environmentally friendly fuel. The discovery of highly effective electrocatalysts, capable of driving oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and urea oxidation reaction (UOR) in urea-alkaline environments, is pivotal for advancing large-scale hydrogen production. This study aims to introduce a new method that involves creating nanosheets of high-loading iridium single atoms embedded in a manganese-containing nickel oxyhydroxide matrix (Ir@Mn─NiOOH). These nanostructures are derived from self-supported hydrate pre-catalyst nanosheets grown on nickel foam and then activated through electrochemical etching pretreatment. The Ir@Mn─NiOOH nanoarchitecture displays outstanding electrocatalytic activity, having a low overpotential of just 258 mV and a potential of 1.319 V (at 10 mA cm) for OER and UOR, respectively. Such extraordinary catalytic characteristics of Ir@Mn─NiOOH is mainly owing to the strong synthetic electronic interaction between Ir single atoms and Mn─NiOOH, which can change its electronic characteristics and boost electrochemical catalytic sites. This research presents a new way to produce exceptionally efficient catalysts by adding a synergistic effect to complex multi-electron processes.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/smll.202406786 | DOI Listing |
Langmuir
January 2025
Key Laboratory of Surface & Interface Science of Polymer Materials of Zhejiang Province, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, 928 Second Street, Zhejiang, Hangzhou 310018, China.
Molecule-electrode interfaces play a pivotal role in defining the electron transport properties of molecular electronic devices. While extensive research has concentrated on optimizing molecule-electrode coupling (MEC) involving electrode materials and molecular anchoring groups, the role of the molecular backbone structure in modulating MEC is equally vital. Additionally, it is known that the incorporation of heteroatoms into the molecular backbone notably influences factors such as energy levels and conductive characteristics.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInorg Chem
January 2025
Department of Chemistry, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California 90089, United States.
The functional properties of tetraaryl compounds, M(aryl) (M = transition metal or group 14 element), are dictated not only by their common tetrahedral geometry but also by their central atom. The identity of this atom may serve to modulate the reactivity, electrochemical, magnetic, and optical behavior of the molecular species, or of extended materials built from appropriate tetraaryl building blocks, but this has not yet been systematically evaluated. Toward this goal, here we probe the influence of Os(IV), C, and Si central atoms on the spectroelectrochemical properties of a series of redox-active tetra(ferrocenylaryl) complexes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSci Adv
January 2025
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA.
Understanding chromatin organization requires integrating measurements of genome connectivity and physical structure. It is well established that cohesin is essential for TAD and loop connectivity features in Hi-C, but the corresponding change in physical structure has not been studied using electron microscopy. Pairing chromatin scanning transmission electron tomography with multiomic analysis and single-molecule localization microscopy, we study the role of cohesin in regulating the conformationally defined chromatin nanoscopic packing domains.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFElife
January 2025
National Centre for Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bangalore, India.
Co-active or temporally ordered neural ensembles are a signature of salient sensory, motor, and cognitive events. Local convergence of such patterned activity as synaptic clusters on dendrites could help single neurons harness the potential of dendritic nonlinearities to decode neural activity patterns. We combined theory and simulations to assess the likelihood of whether projections from neural ensembles could converge onto synaptic clusters even in networks with random connectivity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProc Natl Acad Sci U S A
January 2025
Faculty of Technical Chemistry, Institute of Chemical Technologies and Analytics, Technische Universität Wien, Vienna 1060, Austria.
Atomic force microscopy-infrared spectroscopy (AFM-IR) is a photothermal scanning probe technique that combines nanoscale spatial resolution with the chemical analysis capability of mid-infrared spectroscopy. Using this hybrid technique, chemical identification down to the single molecule level has been demonstrated. However, the mechanism at the heart of AFM-IR, the transduction of local photothermal heating to cantilever deflection, is still not fully understood.
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