Fabrication of transparent and conductive carbon nanotube/polyvinyl butyral films by a facile solution surface dip coating method

Highly Hydrophobic and Superoleophilic Nanofibrous Mats with Controllable Pore Sizes for Efficient Oil/Water Separation

Both the wettability and pore size of filtration materials are of great importance in oil/water separation. However, conventional strategies have mainly focused on the fabrication of filtration materials with special wettability, regardless of the pore size. Herein, we demonstrated the design and construction of special wettable nanofibrous mats with tunable pore sizes as filtration materials for selective and efficient separation of oil from oil/water mixtures. The nanofibrous mats with different pore sizes were prepared by the electrospinning approach using a stainless steel wire mesh as the collector, and the results indicated that the pore size of the nanofibrous mats gradually increased with the decrease in the mesh number. The results of the wettability behavior demonstrated that all of the nanofibrous mats showed highly hydrophobic and superoleophilic properties. Owing to the special wettability and the porous structure, the nanofibrous mats were sequentially applied for oil/water separation, and they showed excellent ability to separate both layered oil/water mixture and water-in-oil emulsion; moreover, it was also found that the oil flux could be highly improved by controlling the pore size of the nanofibrous mat and that the oil flux of the nanofibrous mat with the largest pore size was about 10 times higher than that of the conventional nonwoven mat that had the smallest pore size. The nanofibrous mats developed with controllable pore sizes can therefore be practically used as highly efficient filtration materials in the management of oily water.

Nickel Nanoparticles Entangled in Carbon Nanotubes: Novel Ink for Nanotube Printing

We report the serendipitous discovery of a rapid and inexpensive method to attach nanoscale magnetic chaperones to carbon nanotubes (CNTs). Nickel nanoparticles (NiNPs) become entangled in CNTs after both are dispersed in kerosene by sonication and form conjugates. An externally applied magnetic field manipulates the resulting CNTs-NiNP ink without NiNP separation, allowing us to print an embedded circuit in an elastomeric matrix and fabricate a strain gage and an oil sensor. The new method to print a circuit in a soft material using an NiNP-CNT ink is more rapid and inexpensive than the complex physical and chemical means typically used to magnetize CNTs.

Annealing-free, flexible silver nanowire-polymer composite electrodes via a continuous two-step spray-coating method

For the realization of high-efficiency flexible optoelectronic devices, transparent electrodes should be fabricated through a low-temperature process and have the crucial feature of low surface roughness. In this paper, we demonstrated a two-step spray-coating method for producing large-scale, smooth and flexible silver nanowire (AgNW)-poly3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene:polystyrenesulfonate (PEDOT:PSS) composite electrodes. Without the high-temperature annealing process, the conductivity of the composite film was improved via the lamination of highly conductive PEDOT:PSS modified by dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO). Under the room temperature process condition, we fabricated the AgNW-PEDOT:PSS composite film showing an 84.3% mean optical transmittance with a 10.76 Ω sq(-1) sheet resistance. The figure of merit Φ(TC) was higher than that obtained from the indium tin oxide (ITO) films. The sheet resistance of the composite film slightly increased less than 5.3% during 200 cycles of tensile and compression folding, displaying good electromechanical flexibility for use in flexible optoelectronic applications.