Investigation of the electrocatalytic mechanisms of urea oxidation reaction on the surface of transition metal oxides.

Urea oxidation reaction (UOR) has been widely considered as an alternative anodic reaction to water oxidation for the green production of hydrogen fuel. Due to the high catalytic activity of transition metal oxides towards UOR, various strategies have been developed to improve their syntheses and catalytic properties. However, little is known about the underlying mechanisms of UOR on catalyst surface. In this work, three transition metal oxides, including NiO, Co3O4, and Fe2O3 are investigated as model catalysts. Through analyzing the electrochemical properties by cyclic voltammetry (CV), electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), and operando Raman spectroscopy, it is revealed that NiO has a unique high catalytic activity towards UOR due to simultaneous formation of a thin layer of oxyhydroxide species above 1.40 V vs. RHE in alkaline media. In addition, density functional theory (DFT) calculations further suggest that the adsorption of urea molecules is largely affected by surface interactions resulting in different space configurations, which impose large influences on the consecutive deprotonation and NN formation processes. Overall, results of this work point to the subtle adsorption - kinetics relationship in UOR and highlight the importance of the interfacial electronic interactions on catalyst surface.

Titanium oxide based photocatalytic materials development and their role of in the air pollutants degradation: Overview and forecast.

Due to the anthropogenic pollution, especially the environmental crisis caused by air pollutants, the development of air pollutant degradation photocatalyst has become one of the major directions to the crisis relief. Among them, titania (titanium dioxide, TiO2) family materials were extensively studied in the past two decades due to their strong activity in the photocatalytic reactions. However, TiO2 had a drawback of large bandgap which limited its applications, several modification techniques were hence developed to enhance its catalytic activity and light sensitivity. In recent years, other metal oxide based materials have been developed as replacements for TiO2 photocatalysts. In this review, background information and developments from pure TiO2 to chemically modified TiO2-based materials as photocatalysts were discussed in detail, which covered their basic properties and their role in the air pollutant removal. It also proposes to solve the shortcomings of TiO2 by developing other metal oxide-based materials and predict the future development of TiO2 materials in future environmental applications.

Fabrication of n-type mesoporous silicon nanowires by one-step etching.

In general, n-type mesoporous silicon nanowires (mp-SiNWs) are exclusively created by the two-step metal-assisted chemical etching (MACE). This work first reports that one-step MACE (in HF and AgNO3) is also capable of producing the n-type mp-SiNWs, and the developed formula is generally adapted to generate SiNWs by etching n-Si(100) with electrical resistivity over a range of 10(-3)-10(1) Ω·cm. Integrating the contribution of silicon intrinsic properties in the existing MACE mechanism explicitly accounts for the new findings and contradictions with previous studies. The as-generated mesoporous structures emit red light under laser excitation at room temperature. The red-color emission sensitively varies with temperature over a range of 16-300 K, attributed to a temperature-dependent photoluminescent mechanism.

Metal (Cu, Au)-modified silicon nanowires for high-selectivity solvent-free hydrocarbon oxidation in air.

Metal (Au, Cu)-modified Si nanowires (SiNWs) are superior catalysts for selective oxidation of hydrocarbons, while SiNWs are a powerful substrate support (enhance efficiency and selectivity) for nanocatalysts.

Heteropolyacid-assisted fabrication of carbon nanostructures under ambient conditions.

Under ambient conditions, H(3)PW(12)O(40)-assisted electrochemical reduction process for chemical synthesis of SWNT-CNS, and H(3)PMo(12)O(40)-assisted ball milling process for COS fabrication.