Nutritional composition of Corchorus olitorius leaves

The proximate and mineral composition of Corchorus olitorius leaves collected from a farm site at Barkin-Saleh in Minna town, Niger State, Nigeria, were carried out using standard methods of food analysis. The results of proximate composition showed that the leaves contained 18.38±0.32% ash, 12.54±0.10% crude protein, 11.99±0.50% crude lipid and 19.56±0.18% available carbohydrate. The leaves also had high energy value of 200.78±3.54 kcal/100g respectively. Mineral analysis revealed that potassium (2814.15±8.08 mg/100g) and magnesium (76.69± 0.13 mg/100g) were the dominant elements. The leaves also contained appreciable concentrations of Na (54.56±0.42 mg/100g), Ca (30.55±0.05 mg/100g), P (6.68±0.02 mg/100g), Cu (2.52±0.02 mg/100g), Fe (19.53±0.09 mg/100g), Mn (5.95±0.04 mg/100g) and Zn (4.71+0.01 mg/100g). The present result confirmed that Corchorus Olitorius leaves are rich sources of potassium, iron, copper, manganese and zinc as well as high energy values essential in human and animal nutrition.Keywords: Corchorus olitorius, nutritional composition, minerals, human and animal nutritio

Surface Passivation of GaN Nanowires for Enhanced Photoelectrochemical Water-Splitting

Hydrogen production via photoelectrochemical water-splitting is a key source of clean and sustainable energy. The use of one-dimensional nanostructures as photoelectrodes is desirable for photoelectrochemical water-splitting applications due to the ultralarge surface areas, lateral carrier extraction schemes, and superior light-harvesting capabilities. However, the unavoidable surface states of nanostructured materials create additional charge carrier trapping centers and energy barriers at the semiconductor–electrolyte interface, which severely reduce the solar-to-hydrogen conversion efficiency. In this work, we address the issue of surface states in GaN nanowire photoelectrodes by employing a simple and low-cost surface treatment method, which utilizes an organic thiol compound (i.e., 1,2-ethanedithiol). The surface-treated photocathode showed an enhanced photocurrent density of −31 mA/cm² at −0.2 V versus RHE with an incident photon-to-current conversion efficiency of 18.3%, whereas untreated nanowires yielded only 8.1% efficiency. Furthermore, the surface passivation provides enhanced photoelectrochemical stability as surface-treated nanowires retained ∼80% of their initial photocurrent value and produced 8000 μmol of gas molecules over 55 h at acidic conditions (pH ∼ 0), whereas the untreated nanowires demonstrated only <4 h of photoelectrochemical stability. These findings shed new light on the importance of surface passivation of nanostructured photoelectrodes for photoelectrochemical applications