NTCDA compounds of optoelectronic interest: Theoretical insights and experimental investigation

Nanoscale Fe3O4 Electrocatalysts for Oxygen Reduction Reaction

This study presents a straightforward hydrothermal synthesis approach to fabricate uniform and highly dispersed nanoscale Fe3O4 electrocatalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). FeSO4·7H2O is used as the precursor, and sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) is incorporated as a dispersing agent to optimize particle size and dispersion. The SDS concentration plays a crucial role in controlling the particle size and distribution, with higher SDS concentrations resulting in smaller, well-dispersed particles (30-40 nm), compared to the agglomerated particles formed without SDS. The Fe3O4 catalyst demonstrates significant enhancement in ORR performance, with a half-wave potential of 0.091 V vs. Hg/HgO and a limiting diffusion current density of -5.50 mA cm2, surpassing the performance of agglomerated Fe3O4 and approaching that of state-of-the-art 20% Pt/C catalysts. Additionally, the Fe3O4 catalyst exhibits superior stability and resistance to methanol and CO poisoning, presenting a promising alternative to platinum-based catalysts for ORR applications. This work introduces an efficient approach for the synthesis of high-performance and evenly distributed Fe3O4 electrocatalysts, offering a new pathway for the development of metal oxide-based ORR catalysts with enhanced activity and durability.

Enhancing Electrical Insulation and Thermal Conductivity in Polymer Through Constructing Energy-Dissipation Organic Electron Acceptor/Inorganic Filler

To address the issue that both electrical insulation and thermal transport performance of materials are hard to enhance synchronously, a trap-barrier synergistic strategy is proposed and utilizes the organic electronic acceptor 1,4,5,8-naphthalenetetracarboxylic anhydride (NDA) to modify the inorganic filler Al2O3 (AO), resulting in the formation of AO@NDA, referred to as the "energy dissipator." It restricts carrier mobility and dissipates carrier energy through the synergistic effect of trap-barrier interactions, thereby enhancing the breakdown strength of the composites. In addition, it is further enhanced the long-term effectiveness of the energy dissipator by modifying its chemical activity, based on the molecular design of NDA. The results demonstrate that the introduction of the energy dissipator significantly improves the electrical insulation properties of the composites. For example, the breakdown strength of SG filled with 15 wt.% AO@NDA reaches to 18.7 kV mm-1, which is added up to 11.7% compared to AO/SG at the same loading. Moreover, the high-temperature electrically insulating properties of SG composites are also outstanding due to their preeminent thermal stability and transport performance. This work will present a novel, effective, and scalable approach for the field of power equipment packaging materials.

Design of High-Performance Inorganic-Organic Hybrid Nonlinear Optical Materials Using Superhalogen Al13 and Dianhydrides

Novel inorganic-organic hybrid complexes Al13-X (X represents the dianhydrides PMDA, NTCDA, and PTCDA) are theoretically designed and studied using density functional theory (DFT) and time-dependent DFT. These conjugated dianhydrides containing four acceptor carbonyl groups are commonly used as electron acceptor materials. These compounds possess large binding energies, reflecting the sufficient binding of Al13 to the dianhydride molecule. The binding nature of the complexes is of charge transfer type, i.e., electrons are transferred from the aluminum cluster to the dianhydride. All of the aimed complexes have large mean polarizability (α0) and first hyperpolarizability (β0). The β0 values are explained on the basis of electronic transitions in crucial excited states using the TD-DFT method. Additionally, the hole-electron distribution was analyzed, revealing the nature of electronic excitation. Absorption spectra analysis shows that these complexes have an excellent infrared (IR) transparent region (1000-5000 nm). Therefore, these inorganic-organic hybrid complexes with high stability can be considered as potential candidates for new IR nonlinear optical molecules.

Effective voltammetric tool for Nano-detection of triazine herbicide (1-Chloro-3-ethylamino-5-isopropylamino-2,4,6-triazine) by naphthalene derivative

The development and operation of a nanosensor for detecting the poisonous 1-chloro-3-ethylamino-5-isopropylamino-2,4,6-triazine (Atrazine) are described in this study for the first time. The carbon electrode (CE) surface was modified with cysteine-substituted naphthalene diimide to create this sensitive platform. The developed nanosensor (NDI-cys/GCE) was evaluated for its ability to sense Atrazine using differential pulse voltammetry and cyclic voltammetry. To achieve the best response from the target analyte, the effects of several parameters were examined to optimize the conditions. The cysteine-substituted naphthalene diimide significantly improved the signals of the Atrazine compared to bare GCE due to the synergistic activity of substituted naphthalene diimide and cysteine molecules. Under optimal conditions, atrazine detection limits at the (NDI-cys/GCE) were reported to be 94 nM with a linear range of 10-100 μM. The developed sensing platform also showed positive results when used to detect the atrazine herbicide in real tap water, wastewater, and milk samples. Furthermore, a reasonable recovery rate for real-time studies, repeatability, and stability revealed that the developed electrochemical platform could be used for sample analysis.

Halogen Doping to Control the Band Gap of Ascorbic Acid: A Theoretical Study

Ascorbic acid is an important antioxidant agent that acts as an electron donor and is involved in many physiological processes. Structural modification in ascorbic acid is a subject of extensive biochemical research due to its involvement in a variety of relevant phenomena including electron transport, complex redox reactions, neurochemical reactions, enzymatic reactions, and chemotherapeutic potential. In this work, the structure of ascorbic acid is modified via doping with the first three members of the halogen group to investigate the changes in the electronic structure and spectroscopic parameters using first-principles methods. To obtain the lowest-energy structures, different basis sets in density functional theory (DFT) and Hartree-Fock approaches were employed in the geometry optimization process. The potential energy maps of the structures were computed to study the molecular orientations and their optical and electrical properties. The spectroscopic properties were computed via UV-vis and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopies to study the effects of doping into the compound. To obtain further insights into the chemical structure, the Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectra of the materials were theoretically investigated. It was found that the band gap is sensitive to doping as we moved from fluorine to chlorine and then to bromine.

Developing visible light responsive BN/NTCDA heterojunctions with a good degradation performance for tetracycline

In this paper, a series of BN/NTCDA photocatalysts have been prepared using a simple calcination method and their photocatalytic performance under visible light irradiation is studied with tetracycline (TC) as the target pollutant.