The Effect of Rare-Earth Elements on the Morphological Aspect of Borate and Electrocatalytic Sensing of Biological Compounds

Adjusting the morphological characteristics of a material can result in improved electrocatalytic capabilities of the material itself. An example of this is the introduction of rare-earth elements into the borate structure, which gives a new perspective on the possibilities of this type of material in the field of (bio)sensing. In this paper, we present the preparation of borates including La, Nd and Dy and their application for the modification of a glassy carbon electrode, which is used for the non-enzymatic detection of a biologically relevant molecule, vitamin B6 (pyridoxine). Compared with the others, dysprosium borate has the best electrocatalytic performance, showing the highest current and the lowest impedance, respectively, as determined using cyclic voltammetry and impedance tests. Quantitative testing of B6 was performed in DPV mode in a Britton–Robinson buffer solution with a pH of 6 and an oxidation potential of about +0.8 V. The calibration graph for the evaluation of B6 has a linear range from 1 to 100 μM, with a correlation coefficient of 0.9985 and a detection limit of 0.051 μM. The DyBO3-modified electrode can be used repeatedly, retaining more than 90% of the initial signal level after six cycles. The satisfactory selectivity offered a potential practical application of the chosen method for the monitoring of pyridoxine in artificially prepared biological fluids with acceptable recovery. In light of all the obtained results, this paper shows an important approach for the successful design of electrocatalysts with tuned architecture and opens new strategies for the development of materials for the needs of electrochemical (bio)sensing

Twinning induced nanostructure formation during cryo-deformation

In the present work the influence of cryo-rolling to a true strain ε =2.66 on twinning and formation of ultrafine-rained/nanostructure in commercial-purity titanium and Fe-0.3C-23Mn-1.5Al TWIP steel was quantified using scanning and transmission electron microscopy. Different influence of twinning on the kinetics of microstructure refinement and nanostructure formation in titanium and steel was revealed. In titanium twin boundaries during deformation transform into arbitrary high-angle grain boundaries thereby promoting the microstructure refinement to a grain/subgrain size of 80 nm. In steel twinning has less pronounced influence on the microstructure refinement. However, very fine grains/subgrains with the size of 30-50 nm was observed in the microstructure after rolling at 77K to a true thickness strain of 2.6