Fe/N co-doped nano-TiO_(2)wrapped mesoporous carbon spheres for synergetically enhanced adsorption and photocatalysis

Carbon-based adsorption and TiO_(2)-based photocatalysis are both safe and low-cost ways of pollutant pu-rification.Constructing C-TiO_(2)architectures can effectively improve removal efficiency.However,most of those carbon frames only acted as supporting substrates,exhibiting rather limited synergistic action from TiO_(2)and carbon.Herein,Fe/N co-doped nano-TiO_(2)wrapped on mesoporous carbon spheres with a core-shell structure was designed.The Fe,N co-doped carbon sphere with a hierarchical structure im-proved the synergy of adsorption and transfer during the photocatalytic process.Without extra dopant,the Fe and N partly exposed on the surface realized the in-situ migrating into the TiO_(2)shell to en-hance the interface effect,which significantly promoted the photocatalytic efficiency of the composite.Furthermore,the photocatalytic efficiency of the composite was investigated through two typical pollu-tants under visible-light irradiation.The degradation efficiencies for rhodamine B and paraxylene were 96.2%in 60 min and 94.1%in 20 min,respectively,with the apparent rate constant of 0.045 min^(-1)and 0.049 min^(-1),8.3 and 11.4 times of that for bare TiO_(2).The composite is likely advantageous for treating diverse environmental pollutants.

Anomalous enhancement of fluorescence of carbon dots through lanthanum doping and potential application in intracellular imaging of ferric ion

An anomalous enhancement of fluorescence of carbon dots （CDs） was observed via lanthanum （La） doping. La-doped CDs （La-CDs） were prepared through microwave pyrolysis within 4 min. With La^3＋ doping, the emission band shifted from blue to green although LaB＋ is non-fluorescent. The quantum yield and fluorescence lifetime improved by about 20% and 35%, respectively. All experiment results indicate that La^3＋ doping is an effective way to tune fluorescence and improve the performance of CDs. Another unique attribute of La-CDs is high sensitivity to Fe^3＋. The La-CD-based fluorescence probe was established and used for sensitive and selective detection of Fe^3＋ with a limit of detection of 91 nmol/L. The proposed fluorescence probe also was successfully employed to visualize intracellular Fe^3＋ in live HeLa cells through cell imaging. It was also shown that yttrium exhibited the same fluorescence enhancement effect as La. The results may provide a new route for preparing CDs with special properties.

Recent progress on microfluidic biosensors for rapid detection of pathogenic bacteria

Rapid on-site detection of pathogenic bacteria with high sensitivity and specificity is becoming an urgent need in public health assurance, medical diagnostics, environmental monitoring, and food safety fields. Despite being reliable and widely used, the existing methods of bacteria detection are cumbersome and time-consuming, which is not conducive to field detection. Microfluidic lab-on-a-chip technology has provided a detective tool for various analytes, due to its miniaturization, portability and low reagent consumption. Within this progress report, advances in the bacteria detection using microfluidic biosensors were discussed. Typical methods for pathogenic bacteria capture, separation and detection were introduced respectively in the first part. Then key applications of microfluidic biosensor-based rapid bacteria detection were presented. Finally, we made a conclusion and discussed possible research prospects in aspects of microfluidic biosensors for rapid detection of pathogenic bacteria.