Atomically monodispersed heterogeneous catalysts with uniform active sites and high atom utilization efficiency are ideal heterogeneous catalytic materials. Designing such type of catalysts, however, remains a formidable challenge. Herein, using a wet-chemical method, we successfully achieved a mesoporous graphitic carbon nitride (mpg-C₃N₄) supported dual-atom Pt₂ catalyst, which exhibited excellent catalytic performance for the highly selective hydrogenation of nitrobenzene to aniline. The conversion of ˃99% is significantly superior to the corresponding values of mpg-C₃N₄-supported single Pt atoms and ultra-small Pt nanoparticles (~2 nm). First-principles calculations revealed that the excellent and unique catalytic performance of the Pt₂ species originates from the facile H₂ dissociation induced by the diatomic characteristics of Pt and the easy desorption of the aniline product. The produced Pt₂/mpg-C₃N₄ samples are versatile and can be applied in catalyzing other important reactions, such as the selective hydrogenation of benzaldehyde and the epoxidation of styrene.

The electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is essential for future renewable and clean energy technology. Screening low-cost and highly active catalysts efficiently, however, is still a grand challenge. Herein, we symbolize a highly efficient guiding principle to govern the electrocatalytic activity of single-atom catalysts (SACs) based on AX (A = Al, Ga, In, and Tl; X = S and Se), BX₂ (B = Mo and W) and ZrS₂ monolayer substrates for the HER. Our results reveal that the catalytic performance of SACs for the HER is highly correlated with the electronegativity of the active site and its neighboring atoms as well as the distance between them. The descriptor was introduced to determine the activity of SACs for the HER, where the generalized principle can help to predict and design efficient electrochemical catalysts for hydrogen generation. More importantly, the identified descriptor can be acquired only from initial structures of the materials without considering other complicated processes involved in the HER, which is beneficial for screening catalysts more conveniently and quickly. Such an efficient descriptor, whose reliability has been demonstrated by more than 100 cases, may have potential applications in constructing efficient and low-cost SACs both theoretically and experimentally.

Developing a green and economical synthetic strategy for ZnS nanotubes is of great interest. In this work, ZnS nanotubes are successfully fabricated using only three raw materials (Zn(CH₃COO)₂, NaHCO₃ and Na₂S) through a simple two step synthetic route at ambient temperature. It is worth noting that the process is economical and environmentally friendly, without the need for high pressure or elevated temperature conditions. Interestingly, a very obvious feature is the existence of abundant sulfur surface defects on the as-prepared ZnS nanotubes, which not only produces strong defect-related fluorescence properties, but also leads to abundant water adsorbed on the surface of zinc sulfide. Furthermore, the as-prepared ZnS nanotubes as an adsorbent are exploited in the adsorption of organic dyes. Notably, the resultant products display superior selective adsorption ability for anionic dyes with amine (–NH₂/NH) functional groups over a wide pH range through the synergistic effect of hydrogen bonding and electrostatic attraction between the dye molecules and the adsorbent. Taking CR dye as an example, the maximum adsorption capacity for the removal of Congo red reaches 724.6 mg g⁻¹ in water, much higher than many composite adsorbents reported in the literature. Thus, the present study not only presents a promising strategy for fabrication of ZnS nanotubes but also indicates their great potential application as environmentally friendly adsorbents in organic dye separation technologies or dye removal.

Using NaClO as an oxidant, urea was oxidized as carbon source to prepare the Cu–Mg-precursors, which further reacted with sodium ascorbate to form porous Cu₂O NPs. A high sensitivity and excellent selectivity for colorimetric detection of glucose andl-cysteine has been developed based on the nanozyme.

Rationalizing a single-parameter descriptor that can conveniently and accurately evaluate the catalytic performance of single-atom catalysts (SACs) for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is one of the most important and challenging goals in electrochemical energy applications. Herein, the OER processes for different SACs based on various mono-layer materials, such as transition-metal dichalcogenide (TMDs) and group-III monochalcogenide mono-layers, have been systematically investigated, based on which we demonstrate that the adsorption energy (E_ad) of transition-metal (TM) atoms can serve as a promising single-parameter descriptor in conveniently and efficiently predicting the catalytic performance of SACs for the OER. A favorable linear relationship between E_ad and adsorption free energy of reaction intermediates as well as the overpotential of the OER was evidenced. The reliability of the proposed descriptor was verified using nearly 100 samples together with the consistent results compared with the available experimental data. More importantly, such a single-parameter descriptor, E_ad, can be obtained directly from the initial optimized structures, offering a simple and efficient strategy for evaluating the performance of SACs. Thus, this highlighted descriptor without the need for considering the complicated reaction process can not only reduce the computational cost but also assist in designing non-noble SACs to substitute experimentally identified Ru/Ir-based catalysts.