Grain-Boundary-Rich Ceria Metallene Nanozyme with Abundant Metal Site Pairs Boosts Phosphatase-like Activity.

Abstract

Natural phosphatases featuring paired metal sites inspire various advanced nanozymes with phosphatase-like activity as alternatives in practical applications. Numerous efforts to create point defects show limited metal site pairs, further resulting in insufficient activity. However, it remains a grand challenge to accurately engineer abundant metal site pairs in nanozymes. Herein, we report a grain-boundary-rich ceria metallene nanozyme (GB-CeO₂) with phosphatase-like activity. Grain boundaries acting as the line or interfacial defects can effectively increase the content of Ce⁴⁺/Ce³⁺ site pairs to 72.28%, achieving a 49.28-fold enhancement in activity. Furthermore, abundant grain boundaries optimize the band structure to assist the photoelectron transfer under irradiation, which further increases the content of metal site pairs to 88.96% and finally realizes a 114.39-fold enhanced activity over that of CeO₂ without irradiation. Given the different inhibition effects of pesticides on catalysts with and without irradiation, GB-CeO₂ was successfully applied to recognize mixed toxic pesticides.