The Compact Support Neural Network.

Neural networks are popular and useful in many fields, but they have the problem of giving high confidence responses for examples that are away from the training data. This makes the neural networks very confident in their prediction while making gross mistakes, thus limiting their reliability for safety-critical applications such as autonomous driving and space exploration, etc. This paper introduces a novel neuron generalization that has the standard dot-product-based neuron and the radial basis function (RBF) neuron as two extreme cases of a shape parameter. Using a rectified linear unit (ReLU) as the activation function results in a novel neuron that has compact support, which means its output is zero outside a bounded domain. To address the difficulties in training the proposed neural network, it introduces a novel training method that takes a pretrained standard neural network that is fine-tuned while gradually increasing the shape parameter to the desired value. The theoretical findings of the paper are bound on the gradient of the proposed neuron and proof that a neural network with such neurons has the universal approximation property. This means that the network can approximate any continuous and integrable function with an arbitrary degree of accuracy. The experimental findings on standard benchmark datasets show that the proposed approach has smaller test errors than the state-of-the-art competing methods and outperforms the competing methods in detecting out-of-distribution samples on two out of three datasets.

Surface/interface engineering N-doped carbon/NiS2 nanosheets for efficient electrocatalytic H2O splitting.

A facile and effective method for preparing bifunctional electrocatalysts with enhanced activity and stability is desired for hydrogen and oxygen production. In this paper, ion-liquid-like (ILL) nickel-urea (Ni-U) was designed and applied to prepare 2D N-doped carbon/NiS2 (N-C/NiS2) nanohybrids by a one-step in situ pyrolysis synthesis strategy. The fluidity of ILL Ni-U benefits the interface coupling of the 2D N-C/NiS2 nanohybrid. Due to the synergistic effect between NiS2 and N-carbon with high conductivity, the H2O splitting performance of 2D N-C/NiS2 nanohybrids was significantly enhanced in alkaline media. The corresponding two-electrode cell only needed 1.53 V to undertake 10 mA cm-2 for H2O splitting. Moreover, the resultant 2D N-C/NiS2 nanohybrids exhibited lasting electrochemical endurance with the maintenance of its stability for more than 48 h. The synthetic strategy not only provides a simple and scalable route for constructing 2D hybrid electrocatalysts, but also paves a way to improve the HER/OER activity of sulphides via the surface/interface engineering strategy.

Fabricating Amorphous g-C3N4/ZrO2 Photocatalysts by One-Step Pyrolysis for Solar-Driven Ambient Ammonia Synthesis.

Solar-driven nitrogen fixation remains a significant challenge. Graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) is considered as a promising visible light photocatalyst. However, the photocatalytic performance of g-C3N4 is unsatisfactory because of the random transfer of charge carriers in the plane and the low activation efficiency of the reactants. Herein, amorphous ZrO2 was used as a robust cocatalyst of g-C3N4 to increase the NH3 production activity. The g-C3N4/ZrO2 lamellar composites were constructed by a simple one-step pyrolysis of the deep eutectic solvent ZrOCl2·8H2O/urea. The optimum NH4+ yield could reach as high as 1446 µmol·L-1·h-1 at 30 wt % ZrO2 in the g-C3N4/ZrO2 composites, with an apparent quantum efficiency over 2.14% at 400 nm. It is 7.9 times that of pristine g-C3N4 and 27.5 times that of ZrO2. The introduction of amorphous ZrO2 restrained the hydrogen generation, and the amorphous ZrO2 and g-C3N4 together contribute to the rapid photoproduced electron transfer of less electron-hole pair recombination.

"Inverted" Deep Eutectic Solvents Based on Host-Guest Interactions.

Herein, the concept of "inverted" (the mode "molecules mainly interact with cations") deep eutectic solvents (DESs) is proposed. A strategy to form inverted DESs by host-guest interactions was developed, and thus numerous DESs could be designed and formed by a combination of host and guest molecules. These liquids are expected to be used as nonaqueous electrolytes in potassium-ion batteries or other fields for further exploration.

Eutectic Molecular Liquids Based on Hydrogen Bonding and π-π Interaction for Exfoliating Two-dimensional Materials and Recycling Polymers.

Eutectic molecular liquids (EMLs) based on hydrogen-bonding interaction and π-π stacking were prepared. We found that the thermodynamic properties like initial decomposition temperature and glass transition temperature of EMLs are mainly dominated by the hydrogen bond donor, which is beneficial for designing and preparing new EMLs. These new liquid systems could be applied in the field of environmental and material science.

Catalytic deep eutectic solvents for highly efficient conversion of cellulose to gluconic acid with gluconic acid self-precipitation separation.

A family of FeCl3·6H2O based catalytic deep eutectic solvents (CDESs) were formed and used for the conversion of cellulose to gluconic acid with high efficiency. More importantly, gluconic acid could be separated from the reaction system by self-precipitation.