Au-decorated BN nanotube as a breathalyzer for potential medical applications.

Respiratory viral infections such as coronavirus (COVID-19) will cause a great mortality, especially in people who underly lung diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary and asthma. Very recently, the COVID-19 outbreak has exposed the lack of quick approaches for screening people who may have risen risk of pathogen contact. One proposed non-invasive potential approach to recognize the viral infection is analysis of exhaled gases. It has been indicated that the nitric oxide is one of most important biomarkers which might be emanated by respiratory epithelial cells. Using density functional theory calculations, here, we introduced a novel Au-decorated BN nanotube-based breathalyzer for probable recognition of NO gas released from the respiratory epithelial cells in the presence of interfering CO2 and H2O gases. This breathalyzer benefits from different advantages including high sensitivity (sensing response = 101.5), high selectivity, portability, short recovery time (1.8 µs at 298 K), and low cost.

Ultrathin graphitic carbon nitride nanosheets: a low-cost, green, and highly efficient electrocatalyst toward the reduction of hydrogen peroxide and its glucose biosensing application.

In this communication, we demonstrate for the first time that ultrathin graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) nanosheets can serve as a low-cost, green, and highly efficient electrocatalyst toward the reduction of hydrogen peroxide. We further demonstrate its application for electrochemical glucose biosensing in both buffer solution and human serum medium with a detection limit of 11 µM and 45 µM, respectively.

Au-nanoparticle-loaded graphitic carbon nitride nanosheets: green photocatalytic synthesis and application toward the degradation of organic pollutants.

Au nanoparticles (AuNPs) were loaded on graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) nanosheets prepared by ultrasonication-assisted liquid exfoliation of bulk g-C3N4 via green photoreduction of Au(III) under visible light irradiation using g-C3N4 as an effective photocatalyst. The nanohybrids show superior photocatalytic activities for the decomposition of methyl orange under visible-light irradiation to bulk g-C3N4, g-C3N4 nanosheets, and AuNP/bulk g-C3N4 hybrids.