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Metal-free room-temperature phosphorescence (RTP) materials offer unprecedented potentials for photoelectric and biochemical materials due to their unique advantages of long lifetime and low toxicity. However, the achievements of phosphorescence at ambient condition so far have been mainly focused on ordered crystal lattice or on embedding into rigid matrices, where the preparation process might bring out poor repeatability and limited application. In this research, a series of amorphous organic small molecular compounds were developed with efficient RTP emission through conveniently modifying phosphor moieties to β-cyclodextrin (β-CD). The hydrogen bonding between the cyclodextrin derivatives immobilizes the phosphors to suppress the nonradiative relaxation and shields phosphors from quenchers, which enables such molecules to emit efficient RTP emission with decent quantum yields. Furthermore, one such cyclodextrin derivative was utilized to construct a host-guest system incorporating a fluorescent guest molecule, exhibiting excellent RTP-fluorescence dual-emission properties and multicolor emission with a wide range from yellow to purple including white-light emission. This innovative and universal strategy opens up new research paths to construct amorphous metal-free small molecular RTP materials and to design organic white-light-emitting materials using a single supramolecular platform.

Electronic regulation of Mo2C and thus intrinsically improved HER activity via balanced Volmer and Heyrovsky/Tafel steps.

Photocatalytic upgrading of crucial biomass-derived intermediate chemicals (i.e., furfural alcohol, 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF)) to value-added products (aldehydes and acids) was carried out on ultrathin CdS nanosheets (thickness ∼1 nm) decorated with nickel (Ni/CdS). More importantly, simultaneous H production was realized upon visible light irradiation under ambient conditions utilizing these biomass intermediates as proton sources. The remarkable difference in the rates of transformation of furfural alcohol and HMF to their corresponding aldehydes in neutral water was observed and investigated. Aided by theoretical computation, it was rationalized that the slightly stronger binding affinity of the aldehyde group in HMF to Ni/CdS resulted in the lower transformation of HMF to 2,5-diformylfuran compared to that of furfural alcohol to furfural. Nevertheless, photocatalytic oxidation of furfural alcohol and HMF under alkaline conditions led to complete transformation to the respective carboxylates with concomitant production of H.

The doping of In2O3 significantly promoted the catalytic performance of Co3O4 for CO oxidation. The activities of In2O3–Co3O4 increased with an increase in In2O3 content, in the form of a volcano curve. Twenty-five wt % In2O3–Co3O4 (25 InCo) showed the highest CO oxidation activity, which could completely convert CO to CO2 at a temperature as low as −105 °C, whereas it was only −40 °C over pure Co3O4. The doping of In2O3 induced the expansion of the unit cell and structural distortion of Co3O4, which was confirmed by the slight elongation of the Co–O bond obtained from EXAFS data. The red shift of the UV–vis absorption illustrated that the electron transfer from O2– to Co3+/Co2+ became easier and implied that the bond strength of Co–O was weakened, which promoted the activation of oxygen. Low-temperature H2-TPR and O2-TPD results also revealed that In2O3–Co3O4 behaved with excellent redox ability. The XANES, XPS, XPS valence band, and FT-IR data exhibited that the CO adsorption strength became weaker due to the downshift of the d-band center, which correspondingly weakened the adsorption of CO2 and obviously inhibited the accumulation of surface carbonate species. In short, the doping of In2O3 induced the structural defects, modified the surface electronic structure, and promoted the redox ability of Co3O4, which tuned the adsorption strength of CO and oxygen activation simultaneously.

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Calculated answer: First‐principles calculations have been applied to calculate the energy barrier for the key step in CO formation on a Pt surface (see picture; Pt blue, Pt atoms on step edge yellow) to understand the low CO2 selectivity in the direct ethanol fuel cell. The presence of surface oxidant species such as O (brown bar) and OH (red bar) led to an increase of the energy barrier and thus an inhibition of the key step.

Pd/H-ZSM-5 catalysts could completely catalyze CH 4 to CO 2 at as low as 320 °C, while there is no detectable catalytic activity for pure H-ZSM-5 at 320 °C and only a conversion of 40% could be obtained at 500 °C over pure H-ZSM-5. Both the theoretical and experimental results prove that surface acidic sites could facilitate the formation of active metal species as the anchoring sites, which could further modify the electronic and coordination structure of metal species. PdO x interacting with the surface Bronsted acid sites of H-ZSM-5 could exhibit Lewis acidity and lower oxidation states, as proven by the XPS, XPS valence band, CO-DRIFTS, pyridine FT-IR, and NH 3 -TPD data. Density functional theory calculations suggest PdO x groups to be the active sites for methane combustion, in the form of [AlO 2 ]Pd(OH)-ZSM-5. The stronger Lewis acidity of coordinatively unsaturated Pd and the stronger basicity of oxygen from anchored PdO x species are two key characteristics of the active sites ([AlO 2 ]Pd(OH)-ZSM-5) for methane combustion. As a result, the PdO x species anchored by Brønsted acid sites of H-ZSM-5 exhibit high performance for catalytic combustion of CH 4 over Pd/H-ZSM-5 catalysts.