Search

The cations in the solution spontaneously exchange with the constituent atoms in metal nanoparticles, forming single-atom alloys (SAAs) catalysts. The prepared PdRu SAA catalyst exhibited superior activity than commercial Pt for methanol oxidation reaction.

Synaptic vesicles are small membrane-enclosed organelles that store neurotransmitters at presynaptic terminals. The uniform morphology of synaptic vesicles is important for brain function, because it enables the storage of well-defined amounts of neurotransmitters and thus reliable synaptic transmission. Here, we show that the synaptic vesicle membrane protein synaptogyrin cooperates with the lipid phosphatidylserine to remodel the synaptic vesicle membrane. Using NMR spectroscopy, we determine the high-resolution structure of synaptogyrin and identify specific binding sites for phosphatidylserine. We further show that phosphatidylserine binding changes the transmembrane structure of synaptogyrin and is critical for membrane bending and the formation of small vesicles. Cooperative binding of phosphatidylserine to both a cytoplasmic and intravesicular lysine-arginine cluster in synaptogyrin is required for the formation of small vesicles. Together with other synaptic vesicle proteins, synaptogyrin thus can sculpt the membrane of synaptic vesicles.

Rapid one-pot synthesis of magnetic Fe3O4–Pd nanocatalysts for the Suzuki–Miyaura coupling reaction which can be reused by using an external magnet.

In direct H2O2 synthesis, the Pd-Au alloy was considered as a potential catalyst because of its much better performance compared to the prototype Pd; unfortunately, achieving both high activity and selectivity remains a challenge. Here, we synthesized nonconcentric Pd-Au NPs in which Au domain shells are formed only partially on Pd domain cores and tested them for direct H2O2 synthesis. It has three exposed regions of Pd, Au domains, and Pd-Au interfaces in a single NP (hence, a 3-in-1 strategy). Creating nonconcentric forms was demonstrated convincingly by density functional theory calculations. The nonconcentric Pd-Au particles exhibit high and well-balanced performances that are hard to achieve with traditional alloyed Pd-Au. The number of Pd/Au interfaces was found to be the key factor and thus was optimized by controlling the Au precursor concentrations. The hitherto underutilized structure of nonconcentric bimetallic alloys can be useful and thus should be more actively investigated for catalyst development.

Seawater electrolysis for hydrogen (H2) production has been considered one of the most promising yet challenging strategies to overcome the energy and environmental crises. The ocean can provide infinite hydrogen, which provides 96.5% of the planet’s water reserve, but still there are numerous obstacles that limit the practical application of its electrocatalytic reactions. Despite enormous efforts, poor stability caused by contamination from toxic and corrosive chlorine species, low energy efficiency due to high overpotential and sluggish kinetics of the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) of four electron-proton couple reactions, and the absence of large-scale manufacturing technics for earth-abundant elements based electrocatalysts still unresolved. Recently, many tactics have been proposed to improve energy efficiency, and among them, foreign elements doping and interfacial engineering of electrocatalysts are attracting a lot of attention. In this study, interfacial engineered Fe doped NiS electrocatalyst is designed and fabricated by ball-milling method, which is not only favorable to large-scale fabrication for electrocatalysts, but also improves the electrocatalytic performance by controlling the grain boundary and Fe doping concentration. Synthesized interfacial engineered Fe doped NiS electrocatalyst exhibit high OER performance of 300 mV at a current density of 1000 mA cm-2. It also shows the high durability for the OER process in seawater. It is expected that this interfacial engineering technic by ball-milling method contributes to sustainable H2 production industry by designing and mass-producing superior electrocatalytic performance of high durability and low overpotential for seawater splitting.