Monomolecular adsorption on rough surfaces with dynamically changing morphology

Calix[4]arene-Decorated Covalent Organic Framework Conjugates for Lithium Isotope Separation

Lithium isotope separation has attracted extensive interest due to its important role in fusion and fission reactions. Up to now, it is still a great challenge to separate lithium isotopes (⁶Li and ⁷Li) in an efficient manner due to the low capture ability for lithium ions of related materials and highly similar physicochemical properties between lithium isotopes. In this work, three calix[4]arene-decorated crystalline covalent organic frameworks (COFs) with wave-like extension and AA-stacking configuration were designed and utilized for lithium adsorption and its isotope separation. Experimental studies show that these COFs exhibit an outstanding lithium adsorption capacity up to 94.66 mg·g^-1, which is about 2 times beyond that of adsorbents reported in the literature. The high adsorption capacity of COFs could be attributed to the abundant adsorption sites from calix[4]arene unit. More importantly, this study demonstrates for the first time that calixarene groups can separate lithium isotopes with an excellent separation factor up to 1.053 ± 0.002, comparable to the most successful solid-phase lithium separation adsorbent. The calculation based on density functional theory showed that calixarene played an important role in the lithium adsorption. Interestingly, the lithium isotope separation performance is mainly affected by the amine bridging units. This work demonstrated that calixarene COFs are promising adsorbents for lithium isotope separation.

Stochastic simulation of physicochemical processes performance over supported metal nanoparticles

The statistical lattice model has been proposed which permits one to take into account the change in the shape and surface morphology of the nanoparticle under the influence of the reaction media. The influence of monomolecular and dissociative adsorption on the particles equilibrium shape and surface morphology has been studied. It has been shown that by taking into account of attraction "adsorbate-metal" the reshaping of the initial hemispheric particle into cone-shaped one occurs induced by adsorption, similar to the experimentally observed reversible reshaping of active nanoparticles. The model reaction A+B(2) has been studied taking into account the roughening of the active particle surface and the spillover phenomena of the adsorbed A(ads) species over the support surface.

Structural rearrangement of solid surfaces due to competing adsorbate-substrate interactions

Employing a generalized lattice gas theory and the Brownian dynamics simulation, we show that the competing displacive interaction in an adsorbate may cause a continuous distortive transition in the underlying substrate. The threshold for the transition is determined by the competition of the substrate rigidity and the quasielastic energy induced by the adsorbate. In the presence of a strong pinning and repulsive lateral interaction, the resulting structure appears as a compromise between the square lattice of the substrate and the hexagonal arrangement of the adsorbate. For hexagonal substrate lattices the simulation demonstrates that various adsorbate structures (from honeycomb lattices to quasicrystalline pentagonal configurations) may be observed, depending on the effective radii of interaction. Due to the long-ranged coupling the substrate may acquire a substructure induced by the adsorbate. This paper represents a generalization of the work published in Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 3904 (1998).