As a typical family of volatile toxic compounds, benzene derivatives are massive emission in industrial production and the automobile field, causing serious threat to human and environment. The reliable and convenient detection of low concentration benzene derivatives based on intelligent gas sensor is urgent and of great significance for environmental protection. Herein, through heteroatomic doping engineering, rare-earth gadolinium (Gd) doped mesoporous WO₃ with uniform mesopores (15.7–18.1 nm), tunable high specific surface area (52–55 m²·g⁻¹), and customized crystalline pore walls, was designed and utilized to fabricate highly sensitive gas sensors toward benzene derivatives, such as ethylbenzene. Thanks to the high-density oxygen vacancies (O_V) and significantly increased defects (W⁵⁺) produced by Gd atoms doping into the lattice of WO₃ octahedron, Gd-doped mesoporous WO₃ exhibited excellent ethylbenzene sensing performance, including high response (237 vs. 50 ppm), rapid response–recovery dynamic (13 s/25 s vs. 50 ppm), and extremely low theoretical detection limit of 24 ppb. The in-situ diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform and gas chromatograph-mass spectrometry results revealed the gas sensing process underwent a catalytic oxidation conversion of ethylbenzene into alcohol species, benzaldehyde, acetophenone, and carboxylate species along with the resistance change of the Gd-doped mesoporous WO₃ based sensor. Moreover, a portable smart gas sensing module was fabricated and demonstrated for real-time detecting ethylbenzene, which provided new ideas to design heteroatom doped mesoporous materials for intelligent sensors.

Developing efficient platinum-based electrocatalysts with super durability for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is highly desirable to promote the large-scale commercialization of fuel cells. Although progress has been made in this aspect, the electrochemical kinetics and stability of platinum-based catalysts are still far from the requirements of the practical applications. Herein, PtPdFeCoNi high-entropy alloy (HEA) nanoparticles were demonstrated via a high-temperature injection method. PtPdFeCoNi HEA nanocatalyst exhibits outstanding catalytic activity and stability towards ORR due to the high entropy, lattice distortion, and sluggish diffusion effects of HEA, and the HEA nanoparticles delivered a mass activity of 1.23 A/mg_Pt and a specific activity of 1.80 mA/cm_Pt², which enhanced by 6.2 and 4.9 times, respectively, compared with the values of the commercial Pt/C catalyst. More importantly, the high durability of PtPdFeCoNi HEA/C was evidenced by only 6 mV negative-shifted half-wave potential after 50,000 cycles of accelerated durability test (ADT).

Magnetic assembly at the nanoscale level brings potential possibilities in obtaining novel delicate nanostructures with unique physical, photonic or electronic properties. Interface surfactant micelle-directed assembly strategy holds great promising in fabricating ordered mesoporous materials with multifunctionality and pore parameter tunability. Combing these, herein, one-dimensional (1D) nanochains with well-aligned silica-coated magnetic particles as core and mesoporous aluminosilicate as shell are rational fabricated for the first time through magnetic field induced interface coassembly in biliquid system followed by the incorporation of Al species via in-situ chemical modification and transformation strategy. The obtained magnetic mesoporous aluminosilicate nanochains (MMAS-NCs) possess well-defined core–shell–shell sandwich nanostructure, tunable perpendicular mesopore channels in the shell (2.7–7.6 nm), high surface area (359 m²·g^-1), abundant acidic sites, and superparamagnetism with a magnetization saturation of 13.8 emu·g^-1. Thanks to the unique properties, the MMAS-NCs exhibit excellent performance in acting as magnetically recyclable superior solid acid catalysts and nanostirrers with high conversion of over 96.8%, selectivity of 95.0% in the deprotection reaction of benzaldehyde dimethylacetal to benzaldehyde. Moreover, MMAS-NCs exhibit an interesting pore size effect on the catalytic activity, namely, in the pore size range of 2–8 nm, the catalysts with larger pores show significantly enhanced catalytic activity due to the balanced mass transport and density of surface active sites.

Moderate anionic doping is an effective approach to improve the performance of electrocatalysts toward hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) since it can adjust the electronic structure, active site, and phase. The reported studies mainly focus on designing P doped CoS₂, while other phases of cobalt sulfide, such as Co_1-xS and Co₉S₈ doped with P are rarely investigated for HER electrocatalysts. Herein, various cobalt sulfides (including CoS₂/Co_1-xS, Co_1-xS, and Co₉S₈) doped with P are anchored on carbon cloth through a facile hydrothermal method. Among tested electrocatalysts, P doped Co_1-xS exhibits excellent electrocatalytic performance with an overpotential of 110 and 165 mV (vs. RHE) for current densities of 10 and 100 mA·cm^-2, respectively. Density functional theory calculations reveal that P doped Co_1-xS possesses a smaller bandgap and more optimal hydrogen adsorption sites than pristine Co_1-xS. This work initially investigates various cobalt sulfides doped with P and further gets insight into the activity improvement mechanism of P doping, which could guide the design of earth-abundant HER electrocatalysts for the "hydrogen economy".