ABSTRACT
Polytetrafluoroethylene emulsion was ultrasonically mixed with an extremely spinnable poly(acrylic acid-co-hydroxyethyl methacrylate) solution to get a dispersion with good spinnability, and the obtained dispersion was then wet-spun into water-swellable fiber. Crosslinking agents and iron species were simultaneously introduced into the water-swellable fiber through simple impregnation and water swelling. A composite fiber with Fenton reaction-catalyzing function was then fabricated by sequentially conducting crosslinking and sintering treatment. Due to crosslinking-induced good resistance to water swelling and PTFE component-induced hydrophobicity, the composite fiber showed a highly stable activity to catalyze H2O2 to oxidatively decolorize methylene blue (MB). Within nine cycles, the composite fiber could decolorize more than 90% of MB within one minute in the presence of H2O2 and did not show any attenuation in MB decolorization efficiency. The composite fiber still could reduce the total organic carbon of MB aqueous solution from 18.3 to 10.3 mg/L when used for the ninth time. Therefore, it is believable that the prepared fiber has good and broad application prospects in the field of dye wastewater treatment.
ABSTRACT
Theoretical design and experimental fabrication of highly efficient single-atom catalysts (SACs) containing isolated metal atoms monodispersed on appropriate substrates have surged to the forefront of heterogeneous catalysis in recent years. Nevertheless, the instability of SACs, i.e., preferential clustering in chemical reaction processes, dramatically hinders their practical applications. In this paper, using first-principles calculations, we predict that a honeycomb borophene/Al(111) heterostructure can be an ideal candidate to stabilize and enhance the catalysis of many transition metal (TM) SACs via a dual charge transfer mechanism. The Al(111) substrate donates electrons to the pre-covered two-dimensional honeycomb borophene (h-B) to stabilize the latter, and the deposited TM atoms further provide electrons to the h-B, enhancing the covalent binding between the h-B and the Al(111) substrate. Intriguingly, during CO oxidation, the h-B/Al(111) heterostructure can in turn serve as an efficient electron reservoir to accept electrons from or donate electrons to the deposited TM-SACs and the reactants. Such a flexible dual charge transfer mechanism not only facilitates stabilizing the TM-SACs rather than clustering, but also effectively reduces the reaction barriers. Particularly, in contrast to expensive noble metal atoms such as Pd and Pt, low-cost Sc- and Fe-SACs are found to be the most promising SAC candidates that can be stabilized on h-B/Al(111) for O2 activation and CO oxidation, with fairly low reaction barriers (around 0.50-0.65 eV). The present findings may provide important theoretical guidance for the experimental fabrication of highly stable, efficient, and economic SACs stabilized on various heterostructure substrates.
ABSTRACT
Autophagy is an intracellular bulk degradation system, which delivers cytoplasmic components to the lysosome/vacuole. In yeast and mammalian cells, the Apg12-Apg5 conjugate, together with Apg16, form a multimeric complex, which plays an essential role in autopihageosome formation. By large-scale sequencing analysis of a human fetal brain cDNA library, we isolated a cDNA encoding a putative protein with 607 amino acid residues, which shows 90% identity and 93% similarity to mouse Apg16L. This protein, designated human Apg16L, contains a coiled-coil domain and a motif with seven WD repeats, which are also shared by mouse Apg16L. Database searching revealed that Apg16L is mapped to chromosome 2q37.1 and there exist at least four splice variants.
