article · ACS Materials Au
Researchers have synthesised a zinc single-atom nanozyme that mimics the natural carbonic anhydrase enzyme for carbon dioxide capture and conversion. Manufactured via a two-step annealing technique, the material achieved a high metal loading exceeding 18 weight per cent, providing abundant active catalytic sites. The nanozyme exhibited a carbon dioxide uptake of 2.3 mmol per gram and converted over 91 per cent of the gas into bicarbonate in a buffered solution. By adding calcium chloride, the captured carbon was mineralised into solid calcium carbonate at a capacity of 42 mg per milligram of catalyst. Furthermore, because specific amino acids bind to zinc and suppress its catalytic activity, the material served as an analytical tool. It successfully detected histidine, cysteine, glutamic acid, and aspartic acid at sub-micromolar levels, demonstrating utility in measuring amino acids in commercial dietary supplements.
Capturing carbon dioxide and transforming it into stable minerals offers an important pathway for mitigating industrial emissions. Natural enzymes that accelerate this process can be delicate and expensive to produce. Synthetic single-atom catalysts that replicate natural enzyme behaviour provide a durable, high-capacity alternative for carbon mineralisation, while simultaneously offering precise sensing tools for testing commercial nutritional products.
The material demonstrates two clear application pathways: carbon capture and mineralisation, and chemical sensing for quality control in dietary supplements. Relevant users include industrial carbon sequestration operators and analytical testing laboratories. The work represents applied laboratory research tested on commercial supplement formulations, though scaling and deployment in continuous carbon-capture processes remain to be proven beyond batch-scale trials.
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Single-atom nanozymes (SANs) are a class of nanozymes with metal centers that mimic the structure of metalloenzymes. Herein, we report the synthesis of Zn-N-C SAN, which mimics the action of the natural carbonic anhydrase enzyme. The two-step annealing technique led to a metal content of more than 18 wt %. Since the metal centers act as active sites, this high metal loading resulted in superior catalytic activity. Zn-SAN showed a CO<sub>2</sub> uptake of 2.3 mmol/g and a final conversion of CO<sub>2</sub> to bicarbonate of more than 91%. CO<sub>2</sub> was converted via a biomimetic process by allowing its adsorption by the catalyst, followed by the addition of the catalyst to HEPES buffer (pH = 8) to start the CO<sub>2</sub> conversion into HCO<sub>3</sub> <sup>-</sup>. Afterward, CaCl<sub>2</sub> was added to form a white CaCO<sub>3</sub> precipitate, which was then filtered, dried, and weighed. Active carbon and MCM-41 were used as controls under the same reaction conditions. According to the findings, the CO<sub>2</sub> sequestration capacity was 42 mg of CaCO<sub>3</sub>/mg of Zn-SAN. Some amino acids (AAs) with binding affinity for Zn were able to suppress the enzymatic activity of Zn-SAN by blocking the active metal centers. This strategy was used for the detection of His, Cys, Glu, and Asp with detection limits of 0.011, 0.031, 0.029, and 0.062 μM, respectively, and hence was utilized for quantifying these AAs in commercial dietary supplements.
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DOI: 10.1021/acsmaterialsau.4c00156
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