Bismuth-induced synthesis of Au-X (X = Pt, Pd) nanoalloys for electrocatalytic reactions.

Bismuth was introduced as an intermediate to produce Au-X (X = Pt and Pd) bimetallic nanoalloys using the galvanic replacement reaction. The results showed that the Au-X nanoalloys have good activity for electrocatalytic reactions in alkaline media. This strategy can provide an option for the formation of multimetal nanoalloys with similar electrochemical potentials and compositions.

Charge Number Dependence of the Dephasing Rates of a Graphene Double Quantum Dot in a Circuit QED Architecture.

We use an on-chip superconducting resonator as a sensitive meter to probe the properties of graphene double quantum dots at microwave frequencies. Specifically, we investigate the charge dephasing rates in a circuit quantum electrodynamics architecture. The dephasing rates strongly depend on the number of charges in the dots, and the variation has a period of four charges, over an extended range of charge numbers. Although the exact mechanism of this fourfold periodicity in dephasing rates is an open problem, our observations hint at the fourfold degeneracy expected in graphene from its spin and valley degrees of freedom.