No abstract

SignificanceMimicking protein-like specific interactions and functions has been a long-pursued goal in nanotechnology. The key challenge is to precisely organize nonfunctional surface groups on nanoparticles into specific 3D conformations to function in a concerted and orchestrated manner. Here, we develop a method to graft the complementary-determining regions of natural antibodies onto nanoparticles and reconstruct their “active” conformation to create nanoparticle-based artificial antibodies that recognize the corresponding antigens. Our work demonstrates that it is possible to create functions on nanoparticles by conformational engineering, namely tuning flexible surface groups into specific conformations. Our straightforward strategy could be used further to create other artificial antibodies for various applications and provides a new tool to understand the structure and folding of natural proteins.

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The conversion of CO2 by renewable power-generated hydrogen is a promising approach to a sustainable production of long-chain olefins (C4+=) which are currently produced from petroleum resources. The decentralized small-scale electrolysis for hydrogen generation requires the operation of CO2 hydrogenation in ambient-pressure units to match the manufacturing scales and flexible on-demand production. Herein, we report a Cu-Fe catalyst which is operated under ambient pressure with comparable C4+= selectivity (66.9%) to that of the state-of-the-art catalysts (66.8%) optimized under high pressure (35 bar). The catalyst is composed of copper, iron oxides, and iron carbides. Iron oxides enable reverse-water-gas-shift to produce CO. The synergy of carbide path over iron carbides and CO insertion path over interfacial sites between copper and iron carbides leads to efficient C-C coupling into C4+=. This work contributes to the development of small-scale low-pressure devices for CO2 hydrogenation compatible with sustainable hydrogen production.