Vacancy-Engineered Nanoceria: Enzyme Mimetic Hotspots for the Degradation of Nerve Agents

Organophosphorus-based nerve agents, such as paraoxon, parathion, and malathion, inhibit acetylcholinesterase, which results in paralysis, respiratory failure, and death. Bacteria are known to use the enzyme phosphotriesterase (PTE) to break down these compounds. In this work, we designed vacancy-engineered nanoceria (VE CeO2 NPs) as PTE mimetic hotspots for the rapid degradation of nerve agents. We observed that the hydrolytic effect of the nano-material is due to the synergistic activity between both Ce3+ and Ce4+ ions located in the active site-like hotspots. Furthermore, the catalysis by nanoceria overcomes the product inhibition generally observed for PTE and small molecule-based PTE mimetics.

Understanding the Growth of Interfacial Reaction Product Layers between Dissimilar Materials

When one starts to analyze the evolution of the interfacial reaction product layers between dissimilar materials it is often found out that as the number of interacting species grows, the complexity of the analysis increases extremely rapidly. It may even appear that the task is just too difficult to be completed. In this article we present the thermodynamic-kinetic method, which can be used to rationalize the evolution of interfacial reaction layers and bring back the physics to the analyses. The method is conceptually very simple. It combines energetics-what can happen-with kinetics-how fast things take place. Yet the method is flexible enough that it can utilize quantitative and qualitative data starting from the atomistic simulations up to the experiments carried out with bulk materials. Several examples about how to utilize this method in material scientific problems are given.