Rational design of Ruthenium/Cobalt nanoparticles embedded in nitrogen-doped carbon frameworks as a multifunctional nanozyme for dopamine detection and organic pollutant degradation

Exploring efficient multi-functional catalysts with is critical for oxidase-like catalysis and environmental pollutant degradation. In this paper, we report a RuCo alloy embedded in a nitrogen-doped carbon matrix (RuCo@NC) derived from a Co-based metal-organic framework (ZIF-67). RuCo@NC exhibits highly efficient oxidase activity for dopamine (DA) detection, excellent activity for 4-nitrophenol (4-NP) reduction to the higher valued 4-aminophenol (4-AP) with the addition of NaBH solution, and remarkable activity for rhodamine B (RhB) degradation with the addition of the NaBH. Owing to the presence of the reactive oxygen species •OH, the oxidase-like activity of RuCo@NC is increased by 1.94 times that of bare Co@NC. RuCo@NC exhibits superior activity for the 4-NP reduction with a high turnover frequency (TOF) of 1.04×10 mmol mg min. Moreover, when RuCo@NC is employed for RhB degradation with NaBH, the efficiency of the system can reach 93.8 %.