Oriented Free-Standing Ammonium Vanadium Oxide Nanobelt Membranes: Highly Selective Absorbent Materials

Co-axial electrospun polystyrene/polyurethane fibres for oil collection from water surface

The pollution arising from oil spills is a matter of great concern due to its damaging impacts on the ecological environment, which has created a tremendous need to find more efficient materials for oil spill cleanup. In this work, we reported a sorbent for oil soak-up from a water surface with a high sorption capacity, good selectivity, and excellent reusability based on the hydrophobic-oleophilic fibrous mats that were fabricated via co-axial electrospinning polystyrene (PS) solution as the shell solution and polyurethane (PU) solution as the core solution. The fine structures of as-prepared fibers were regulated by manipulating the spinning voltages, core solution concentrations, and solvent compositions in shell solutions, which were also characterized by field emission scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, nitrogen adsorption method, and synchrotron radiation small-angle X-ray scattering. The effects of inter-fiber voids and intra-fiber porosity on oil sorption capacities were well studied. A comparison of oil sorption capacity for the single fiber with different porous structures was also investigated with the help of scanning transmission X-ray microscopy. The results showed that the sorption capacities of the as-prepared sorbent with regards to motor oil and sunflower seed oil can be 64.40 and 47.48 g g(-1), respectively, approximately 2-3 times that of conventional polypropylene (PP) fibers for these two same oils. Even after five sorption cycles, a comparable oil sorption capacity with PP fibers was still maintained, exhibiting an excellent reusability. We believe that the composite PS-PU fibrous mats have a great potential application in wastewater treatment, oil accident remediation and environmental protection.

Macroscopic multifunctional graphene-based hydrogels and aerogels by a metal ion induced self-assembly process

We report a one-step fabrication of macroscopic multifunctional graphene-based hydrogels with robust interconnected networks under the synergistic effects of the reduction of graphene oxide sheets by ferrous ions and in situ simultaneous deposition of nanoparticles on graphene sheets. The functional components, such as α-FeOOH nanorods and magnetic Fe(3)O(4) nanoparticles, can be easily incorporated with graphene sheets to assemble macroscopic graphene monoliths just by control of pH value under mild conditions. Such functional graphene-based hydrogels exhibit excellent capability for removal of pollutants and, thus, could be used as promising adsorbents for water purification. The method presented here is proved to be versatile to induce macroscopic assembly of reduced graphene sheets with other functional metal oxides and thus to access a variety of graphene-based multifunctional nanocomposites in the form of macroscopic hydrogels or aerogels.

Production of large-scale, freestanding vanadium pentoxide nanobelt porous structures

Large-scale, freestanding, porous structures of vanadium pentoxide nanobelts (VPNs) were successfully prepared using the template-free freeze-drying method. The porous and multi-layered VPN macrostructures are composed of randomly oriented long nanobelts (over 100 μm) and their side length can be controlled up to a few tens of centimetres. Also, the bulk density and surface area of these macrostructures are 3-5 mg cm(-3) and 40-80 m(2) g(-1), respectively, which are similar to those of the excellent adsorbents. In addition, the removal efficiency measurements of ammonia molecules revealed that the VPN porous structures can adsorb the ammonia molecules with the combinations of van der Waals forces and strong chemical bonding by functional groups on the VPN surface.