The utilization of nanostructured materials as efficient catalyst for several processes has increased tremendously, and carbon-based nanostructured materials encompassing fullerene and its derivatives have been observed to possess enhanced catalytic activity when engineered with doping or decorated with metals, thus making them one of the most promising nanocage catalyst for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) during electro-catalysis. Prompted by these, and the reported electrochemical, electronic and stability advantage, an attempt is put forward herein to inspect the metal encapsulated, doped, and decorated dependent HER activity of C₂₄ engineered nanostructured materials as effective electro-catalyst for HER. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations have been utilized to evaluate the catalytic hydrogen evolution reaction activity of four proposed bare systems: fullerene (C₂₄), calcium encapsulated fullerene (Ca^encC₂₄), nickel-doped calcium encapsulated fullerene (Ni^dopCa^encC₂₄), and silver decorated nickel-doped calcium encapsulated (Ag^decNi^dopCa^encC₂₄) engineered nanostructured materials at the TPSSh/GenECP/6-311+G(d,p)/LanL2DZ level of theory. The obtained results divulged that, a potential decrease in energy gap (E_gap) occurred in the bare systems, while a sparing increase was observed upon adsorption of hydrogen onto the surfaces, these surfaces where also observed to maintain the least E_H–L gap while the Ag^decNi^dopCa^encC₂₄ surface exhibited an increased electrocatalytic activity when compared to others. The results also showed that the electronic properties of the systems evinced a correspondent result with their electrochemical properties, the Ag-decorated surface also exhibited a proficient adsorption energy $$({E}_{ads}^{H})$$( E ads H ) and Gibb’s free energy (ΔG_H) value. The engineered Ag-decorated and Ni-doped systems were found to possess both good surface stability and excellent electro-catalytic property for HER activities.

We demonstrate the efficacy of nicotinic acid hydrazide as adsorbent/sensor materials for H₂S gas.

This study explains the vibration and interaction of p-xylene and effect of three elements (fluorine, chlorine and bromine) of the halogen family substitution on it. Basic chemistry of four, compounds p-xylene (PX); 3,6-diflouro-p-xylene (DFPX); 3,6-dichloro-p-xylene (DCPX) and 3,6-dibromo-p-xylene (DBPX) has been explained extensively using theoretical approach. Vibrational energy distribution analysis (VEDA) software was used to study the potential energy distribution (PED) analysis, bond length, bond angles and dihedral angles of PX, DFPX, DCPX, DBPX after optimization with GAUSSIAN 09 software. The trend in chemical reactivity and stability of the studied compounds was observed to show increasing stability and decreasing reactivity moving from DBPX, DCPX, DFPX to PX and this was obtained from the calculated highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) and lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) values. Our results show that PX is the best electron donor (best nucleophile) while DBPX is the best electron acceptor (the best electrophile). We also observed that the substituted halogen increases the value of the bond angles but the effect is reduced as the size of the halogen increases. The maximum intensity and the frequency value for the maximum intensity of the different compounds was determined using the VEDA 04 software. From our natural bond orbital (NBO) 7.0 program analysis, the studied compounds are said to show biological activities as well as the intramolecular hyperconjugative interactions responsible for stabilizing the compounds. The NBO results also revealed that the non-bonding interaction existing between the lone pair electron on the halogen atoms and the aromatic ring increases the stability of the halogen substituted para-xylene molecules. Multiwfn: A Multifunctional Wavefunction Analyzer was used for the spectroscopic plots.