A boron-doped diamond nanorod forest (BDDNF) electrode has been fabricated by hot filament chemical vapor deposition (HFCVD) method. This BDDNF electrode exhibits very attractive electrochemical performance compared to conventional planar boron-doped diamond (BDD) electrodes, notably improved sensitivity and selectivity for biomolecule detection. The BDDNF electrode, with the possibility of fabricating a sensitive biosensor for glucose without any catalyst or mediators, shows good activity toward direct detection of glucose by simply putting the bare BDDNF electrode into the glucose solution. Furthermore, the marked selectivity of the BDDNF electrode is very favorable for the determination of glucose in the presence of ascorbic acid (AA) and uric acid (UA). The robust sensitive and selective responses of this nanostructure indicate the promise of this kind of diamond electrode for real applications.

The electrochemical incineration of organic pollutants on a boron-doped diamond (BDD) thin film electrode was examined by bulk electrolysis, and the mechanism of oxidation was investigated. A comparative study with other electrodes such as Pt and glassy carbon (GC) electrodes revealed the superiority of the BDD over these electrodes. The extent of degradation of phenol and formate due to direct oxidation and hydroxyl radicalmediated oxidation were quantified by amperometric measurements. The extent of direct oxidation was found to decrease with increasing potentials due to the competing hydroxyl radical-mediated reactions. The extent of direct oxidation for formate was found to be higher than that for phenol, indicating the probability of higher adsorption of formate on the oxygen-terminated diamond surface. Finally, bulk electrolysis of phenol at the BDD resulted in the complete destruction of phenol to CO 2 with a removal efficiency of 96%, indicating the promising use of BDD for electrochemical waste treatment applications.

An effective, template-free synthesis methodology has been developed for preparing mesoporous nitrogen-doped SrTiO 3 (meso-STON) using glycine as both a nitrogen source and a mesopore creator. The N-doping, large surface area and developed porosity endow meso-STON with excellent activity in visible-light-responsive photodegradation of organic dyes.The exceptional electro-optical properties and physicochemical stability of the perovskite SrTiO 3 (STO) give rise to its attractive performance in photocatalytic applications of solar power, including photocatalytic degradation of organic pollutants, water splitting and photoreduction of CO 2 .1-3 However, the intrinsic large bandgap energy (E g = 3.2 eV) of SrTiO 3 allows only the utilization of UV light, encompassing approximately 5.0% energy of the sunlight. 4 A variety of transition metals (TM) have been doped into a STO's crystal matrix in efforts to tune its electronic bandgap for harvesting visible light. 5,6Unfortunately, TM-doping can also bring about either phase impurity or fast recombination of photogenerated charge carriers. Nonmetal-doping represents another effective strategy to realize visible-light response.7-9 Indeed, it was found that N-doped SrTiO 3 (SrTiO 3Àx N x , STON) exhibited excellent photoreactivity and stability under visible-light irradiation. 10Mesoporous-structured photocatalysts are highly desirable in photocatalysis since their large specific surface area (SSA) and mesoporous channels greatly facilitate adsorption, diffusion and surface reaction of the reactants.11 STO perovskite belongs to the cubic crystal system, and typically has low SSA and poor porosity. Moreover, the porosity of STO could be further destroyed by the known processes of nitriding STO to STON. 5,12Although mesoporous STO has been prepared via templatedirected synthesis using various soft (e.g. surfactant or polymer 13 ) and hard (e.g. inorganic salts 14 ) templates, the synthesis of mesoporous STON has rarely been achieved.Here we report a novel, template-free synthesis methodology to prepare mesoporous STON using glycine as both a nitrogen source and a mesopore creator. Aqueous solution of glycine and Sr(NO 3 ) 2 was dropped into ethanol solution of titanium butoxide under stirring, followed by solvent evaporation and subsequent calcinations at 550 1C for 2 hours. The obtained STON was characterized by XRD, TEM, FTIR, UV-vis, and XPS techniques and used for the photodegradation of three refractory organic dyes under visible-light irradiation.Only a strong single peak appears in the small angle XRD pattern (Fig. 1) of the STON sample, suggesting that it possesses disordered wormlike mesopores. 15 The TEM image in Fig. 2A nicely confirms such mesoporosity. The HRTEM image inserted in Fig. 2A reveals that the walls of the mesopores are comprised of single crystal perovskite STON. The labelled lattice distances are consistent with those of (100) and (110) diffractions obtained from XRD tests (Fig. S1, ESIw). In contrast, the STO sample presents poor mesoporous featu...

Fast and cost-efficient detection and identification of bacteria in food and water samples and biological fluids is an important challenge in bioanalytical chemistry. It was shown recently that bacteria can be detected by measuring the decrease in the diffusion current to the ultramicroelectrode caused by cell collisions with its surface. To add selectivity to the bacteria detection, herein we show the possibility of collision experiments with the signal produced by electrochemical activity of bacterial cells reducing (or oxidizing) redox species. The mediator oxidation/reduction rate can be used to identify different types of bacteria based on their specific redox activities. Here we report the analysis of electrochemical collision transients produced by two kinds of bacteria, Escherichia coli and Stenotrophomonas maltophilia. The effects of the charge and redox activity of bacterial cells on collision events are discussed. The current transients due to live cell collisions were compared to those produced by bacteria killed either by heavy metal ions (cobalt) or by an antibiotic (colistin). This approach is potentially useful for evaluating the effectiveness of antimicrobial agents. Finite-element simulations were carried out to model collision transients.