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The oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is a vital half-reaction in water splitting and metal-air batteries. Developing earth-abundant, highly efficient and durable OER catalysts has faced huge challenges until now, because OER is a strict kinetic sluggish process. Herein, we report the construction of hierarchically porous graphitized carbon (HPGC) supported NiFe layered double hydroxides (LDHs) with a core-shell structure (denoted as HPGC@NiFe) by a facile strategy. The HPGC was first obtained by pyrolysing phenolic resin nanospheres with FeCl and ZnCl as the catalyst and the activator, respectively. Then the NiFe LDH arrays were directly grown on the HPGC by a one-step hydrothermal method. The as-synthesized HPGC@NiFe reveals excellent OER properties with a low onset potential, a lower overpotential of 265 mV (corresponding to the current density at 10 mA cm) and a small Tafel slope (56 mV per decade). And its catalytic activity is even superior to that of the start-of-the-art noble-metal catalyst IrO/C. Notably, the HPGC@NiFe electrode shows admirable stability measured by performing 2000 cycle CVs and long-term electrolysis for 50 h. The prominent performance can be attributed to the synergistic effect between the NiFe-LDHs and the hierarchically porous graphitized carbon, in which the former can increase the exposure of the active sites, while the latter can increase the charge transfer efficiency. Our research implies the possibility for the development of low-cost layered double hydroxides as a promising candidate in electrochemical energy storage and conversion equipment.

Recently, amino acid ionic liquids (AAILs) have attracted much research interest. In this paper, we present the first application of AAILs in chiral separation based on the chiral ligand exchange principle. By using 1-alkyl-3-methylimidazolium L-proline (L-Pro) as a chiral ligand coordinated with copper(II), four pairs of underivatized amino acid enantiomers-dl-phenylalanine (dl-Phe), dl-histidine (dl-His), dl-tryptophane (dl-Trp), and dl-tyrosine (dl-Tyr)-were successfully separated in two major chiral separation techniques, HPLC and capillary electrophoresis (CE), with higher enantioselectivity than conventionally used amino acid ligands (resolution (R(s))=3.26-10.81 for HPLC; R(s)=1.34-4.27 for CE). Interestingly, increasing the alkyl chain length of the AAIL cation remarkably enhanced the enantioselectivity. It was inferred that the alkylmethylimidazolium cations and L-Pro form ion pairs on the surface of the stationary phase or on the inner surface of the capillary. The ternary copper complexes with L-Pro are consequently attached to the support surface, thus inducing an ion-exchange type of retention for the dl-enantiomers. Therefore, the AAIL cation plays an essential role in the separation. This work demonstrates that AAILs are good alternatives to conventional amino acid ligands for ligand-exchange-based chiral separation. It also reveals the tremendous application potential of this new type of task-specific ILs.

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The development of new semiconductor photocatalysts toward splitting water has supplied a promising way to obtain sustainable and clean hydrogen energy. Herein, CdZnS@layered double hydroxide (LDH) composites with a hierarchical flower-like microstructure have been fabricated with the aid of ZnCr-LDH nanosheets as templates. XRD, SEM and HRTEM show that the ZnCr-LDH nanosheets are uniformly dispersed within the composites. The surface of the hierarchical structures is rough and composed of numerous nanocrystals of CdZnS. The HRTEM images indicate that the surface of CdZnS nanocrystals is mainly composed of the (111) plane. Moreover, the visible-light-driven H2 production performance of the CdZnS in the presence and absence of ZnCr-LDH nanosheets has been measured. The results show that ZnCr-LDH nanosheets play an important role in the hierarchical morphology and photocatalytic activity of the as-prepared samples. In the water-splitting process, the visible-light-driven H2 -production rate of hierarchical flower-like CdZnS@LDH is 4.03 times and nearly 10 times higher than that of pristine CdZnS microsphere and pure commercial CdS, respectively. Therefore, this work not only achieves enhanced catalytic performance of the CdZnS by the introduction of ZnCr-LDH nanosheets, but also supplies an insight into the relationship between the hierarchical morphology and the semiconductor photocatalytic activity.