Repairing and Preventing Photooxidation of Few-Layer Black Phosphorus with β-Carotene.

Few-layer black phosphorus (FLBP), a technologically important 2D material, faces a major hurdle to consumer applications: spontaneous degradation under ambient conditions. Blocking the direct exposure of FLBP to the environment has remained the key strategy to enhance its stability, but this can also limit its utility. In this paper, a more ambitious approach to handling FLBP is reported where not only is FLBP oxidation blocked, but it is also repaired postoxidation.

Non-invasive detection of glucose in human urine using a color-generating copper NanoZyme.

Renal complications are long-term effect of diabetes mellitus where glucose is excreted in urine. Therefore, reliable glucose detection in urine is critical. While commercial urine strips offer a simple way to detect urine sugar, poor sensitivity and low reliability limit their use.

Dynamic interactions between peroxidase-mimic silver NanoZymes and chlorpyrifos-specific aptamers enable highly-specific pesticide sensing in river water.

With growing environmental and health concerns over persistent organic compounds such as organophosphates, regulatory bodies have imposed strict regulations for their use and monitoring in water bodies. Although conventional analytical tools exist for the detection of organophosphorus pesticides, new strategies need to be developed to fulfil the ASSURED (affordable, sensitive, specific, user-friendly, rapid, equipment-free and deliverable to end users) criteria of the World Health Organisation. One such strategy is to employ the ability of certain nanoparticles to mimic the enzymatic activity of natural enzymes to develop optical sensors.