Research Highlight from Prof. Hui Wei Lab: Development of Predictive Descriptor for Spinel Oxide Nanozymes
Nanozymes are functional nanomaterials with enzyme mimicking activities. They are considered as the next generation of enzyme mimics. Recently, nanozyme was selected as one of the IUPAC Top Ten Emerging Technologies in Chemistry 2022.
Despite the substantial progress made in the field of nanozymes, most of the materials were developed by serendipity or trial-and-errors. This could be partially attributed to the lack of design principles. To address this longstanding issue, now Prof. Hui Wei from Nanjing University and coworkers developed an effective and predictive descriptor for spinel oxide-based nanozymes. Specifically, they identified that the eg occupancy as such a descriptor. For the model system of ZnB2O4 nanozymes, the eg occupancy could be rationally tuned by varying the B composition (such as Cr, Mn, Fe, and Co). Importantly, a volcano profile was obtained. Moreover, with the help of the eg occupancy, they further discovered a much more active nanozyme, i.e., LiCo2O4. Their study has shown the power of effective descriptors for searching of high performance nanozymes. It may inspire others to develop more descriptor in the future.
Their study was published in Nano Letters.
The link:
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.nanolett.2c03598
The Wei Lab:
