Solar-driven overall water splitting is highly desirable for hydrogen generation with sustainable energy sources, which need efficient, earth-abundant, robust, and bifunctional electrocatalysts for both oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Herein, we propose a heterogeneous bimetallic phosphide/sulfide nanocomposite electrocatalyst of NiFeSP on nickel foam (NiFeSP/NF), which shows superior electrocatalytic activity of low overpotentials of 91 mV at -10 mA cm for HER and of 240 mV at 50 mA cm for OER in 1 M KOH solution. In addition, the NiFeSP/NF presents excellent overall water splitting performance with a cell voltage as low as 1.58 V at a current density of 10 mA cm. Combining with a photovoltaic device of a Si solar cell or integrating into photoelectrochemical (PEC) systems, the bifunctional NiFeSP/NF electrocatalyst implements unassisted solar-driven water splitting with a solar-to-hydrogen conversion efficiency of ∼9.2% and significantly enhanced PEC performance, respectively.

In this work, we clearly demonstrate for the first time the use of transition-metal phosphides to set up a new cathodic analysis platform for sensitive and selective electrochemical nonenzymatic detection of H2O2. With the help of a facile topotactic conversion method, the noble metal-free electrocatalyst of copper(I) phosphide nanowires on three-dimensional porous copper foam (Cu3P NWs/CF) is fabricated with electrochemical anodized Cu(OH)2 NWs as precursor. The Cu3P NWs/CF-based sensor presents excellent electrocatalytic activity for H2O2 reduction with a detection limit of 2 nM, the lowest detection limit achieved by noble-metal free electrocatalyst, which guarantees the possibility of sensitive and reliable detection of H2O2 release from living tumorigenic cells, thus showing the potential application as a sensitive cancer cell detection probe.

In this work, we clearly demonstrate for the first time the use of a p-type semiconductor, Cu2O, as the core unit of a photocathode to set up a new photocathodic analysis platform. With the help of a facile protection strategy, the Cu2O photocathode presented efficient photoelectrochemical performance for H2O2 sensing with a detection limit of 0.15 μM, which allowed the new photocathodic analysis platform to detect H2O2 released from living tumorigenic cells, thus demonstrating its potential application as a sensitive cancer detection probe. The protected TiO2 layer was coated on Cu2O to form a quasi-core/shell structure (TiO2@Cu2O) through a facile sol-gel method, which significantly enhanced the photostability, comparable to the TiO2@Cu2O samples prepared by a complicated atomic layer deposition method. In this new photocathodic analysis platform, the semiconductive metal oxides accomplish a job usually completed by conductive noble metals in an electroanalysis process. We believe that this photocathodic detection strategy opens up a new detection approach, extends the application range of semiconductor materials, and thus sheds light on the further fusing of photoelectrochemical technique with analytical methods.

In this work, we proposed to utilize three-dimensional porous copper foam (CF) as conductive substrate and precursor of in-situ growth CuO nanowires (NWs) for fabricating electrochemical nonenzymatic glucose sensors. The CF supplied high surface area due to its unique three-dimensional porous foam structure, and thus resulted in high sensitivity for glucose detection. The CuO NWs/CF based nonenzymatic sensors presented reliable selectivity, good repeatability, reproducibility, and stability. In addition, the CuO NWs/CF based nonenzymatic sensors have been employed for practical applications, and the glucose concentration in human serum was measured to be 4.96 ± 0.06 mM, agreed well with the value measured from the commercial available glucose sensor in hospital, and the glucose concentration in saliva was also estimated to be 0.91 ± 0.04 mM, which indicated that the CuO NWs/CF owned the possibility for noninvasive glucose detection. The rational design of CuO NWs/CF provided an efficient strategy for fabricating of electrochemical nonenzymatic biosensors.

In this communication, a new photoelectrochemical aptasensor with Au nanoparticle functionalized self-doped TiO2 nanotube arrays (Au/SD-TiO2 NTs) as the core sensing unit and aptamers as the recognition unit was set up to accomplish the sensitive and selective detection of kanamycin with the lowest detection limit of 0.1 nM.