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Exploring electrocatalysts with high-efficiency oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is significant for practical applications of fuel cells and metal–air batteries. In this work, a twisted core@shell material has been prepared with helical polypyrrole nanotubes (HPPys) as the core and coordination polymers (CPs) as the shell. After the pyrolysis process, a dense twisted carbon layer was formed by the reaction of CP and HPPy at its interface under Ar. The derived twisted carbonaceous nanotube exhibits good performance in both electrocatalytic ORR and OER. When used as the air-electrode in a flexible Zn–air battery, the battery shows good performance and stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A newly designed copper complex of 5,15-bis(pentafluorophenyl)-10,20-bis(o-carborane)porphyrin (1) was synthesized and tested for the electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). In acetonitrile, 1 was much more efficient than Cu 5,15-bis(pentafluorophenyl)-10,20-diphenylporphyrin (2) for electrocatalytic HER by shifting the catalytic wave to the anodic direction by 190 mV. In aqueous media, 1 also outperformed 2 by achieving higher current densities under smaller overpotentials. This enhancement was attributed to the aromatic and the strong electron-withdrawing properties of o-carborane groups. This work is significant to address the crucial effects of meso-(o-carborane) substituents of metal porphyrins on boosting the electrocatalytic HER. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) are widely used as precursors to generate derivatives for electrocatalysis. However, two-dimensional (2D) MOFs often suffer from the collapse of their 2D structures after being treated at high temperature. Herein, we used the dense ZIF-EC1 as a precursor and doped Co as a secondary metal. The content of Co in ZIF-EC1 can be tuned without changing the crystalline structure. After pyrolysis, the derived carbon-based material maintains the 2D morphology from the parental precursor. The derived ZIF-EC1(ZnCo)-20-900 exhibits the best activity toward the ORR, which is even better than that of Pt/C. This work demonstrates the potential of using a nonporous dense MOF as a precursor and optimizing electrocatalytic ORR activity by tuning the Co content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cavity of a [2+3] organic molecular cage was partitioned and functionalized by inserting inner-directed P=O bonds, which shows CO2 capture and CH4 exclusion due to the size-matching and polarity effects. Computational results demonstrate that the successful segmentation via polar P=O bonds facilitates the CO2 molecules to reside selectively inside the cavity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]