The current pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has presented unprecedented challenges to the healthcare systems in almost every country around the world. Currently, there are no proven effective vaccines or therapeutic agents against the virus. Current clinical management includes infection prevention and control measures and supportive care including supplemental oxygen and mechanical ventilatory support. Evolving research and clinical data regarding the virologic SARS-CoV-2 suggest a potential list of repurposed drugs with appropriate pharmacological effects and therapeutic efficacies in treating COVID-19 patients. In this review, we will update and summarize the most common and plausible drugs for the treatment of COVID-19 patients. These drugs and therapeutic agents include antiviral agents (remdesivir, hydroxychloroquine, chloroquine, lopinavir, umifenovir, favipiravir, and oseltamivir), and supporting agents (Ascorbic acid, Azithromycin, Corticosteroids, Nitric oxide, IL-6 antagonists), among others. We hope that this review will provide useful and most updated therapeutic drugs to prevent, control, and treat COVID-19 patients until the approval of vaccines and specific drugs targeting SARS-CoV-2.

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Developing highly active electrocatalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) with a high surface area, high catalytic activity, low cost and high conductivity is a big challenge for various energy technologies. Herein, for the first time, we realized the simultaneous nitrogen doping and etching of CoO nanosheets to produce N-doped nanoporous CoO nanosheets with oxygen vacancies by N plasma. The increase in active sites in N-doped CoO nanosheets and improved electronic conductivity with N doping and oxygen vacancies results in excellent electrocatalytic activity for the OER. Compared with pristine CoO nanosheets, the N-doped CoO nanosheets with oxygen vacancies have a much lower required potential of 1.54 V versus a reversible hydrogen electrode than the pristine CoO nanosheets (1.79 V) to reach the current density of 10 mA cm. The N-doped and etched CoO nanosheets have a much lower Tafel slope of 59 mV dec than pristine CoO nanosheets (234 mV dec). The enhanced electrocatalytic activity for the OER is caused by the increased surface area, N doping and the produced oxygen vacancies.

The selective oxidation of hydrocarbons to the corresponding ketones with solvent-free and molecular oxygen as an oxidant is of great importance in academic and industrial fields in view of economy and environment.

In this paper, cobaltporphyrin is used as a precursor to synthesize carbon nitrides with metal active sites supported on silica spheres by heat treatment (i.e. M-N-C/SiO2). The catalytic performance of M-N-C/SiO2 for ethylbenzene oxidation has been investigated and techniques such as N2 adsorption/desorption isotherm, NH3-TPD, HRTEM, STEM mapping and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) are employed to explore the active sites for ethylbenzene oxidation. XPS results show that cobalt compounds, such as CoOx and metallic Co, as well as cobalt nitrides, such as Co-Nx, are formed after the pyrolysis of cobaltporphyrin. However, according to the NH3-TPD experiment, Co-Nx may be the primary active site. When Co-Nx is poisoned by KSCN, the significant loss of catalytic activity further proves and verifies that Co-Nx instead of CoOx is the primary active site of M-N-C/SiO2 for ethylbenzene oxidation.

Electropolymerized supermolecule derived N, P co-doped carbon as a highly efficient metal-free HER catalyst.

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A series of catalysts, i.e. metal oxides (MO) such as CeO2, Fe2O3 and Al2O3 supported Co-N-C (Co-N-C/MO) were prepared by heating supported cobalt porphyrin in a N2 atmosphere. Among the Co-N-C/MO catalysts, Co-N-C/CeO2 shows a remarkable catalytic performance for ethylbenzene oxidation with ethylbenzene conversion of 33.1% and selectivity to acetophenone of 74.8%. In addition, the interaction between Co-N-C and supports was tentatively characterized by techniques such as XRD, HRTEM, XPS etc. According to XPS, the presence of the redox cycle between Ce(3+) and Ce(4+) in CeO2 facilitates the formation of cobalt ions in the high valence state and the Co-Nx sites, which are typically responsible for the high catalytic activity. The high performance benefits from the synergistic effect between Co-N-C and CeO2 and the well-dispersed Co-based sites.