High-yield, rapid and facile synthesis of elongated pure anatase titania nanoparticles has been achieved through a nonaqueous microwave-based approach. The residual organics onto nanoparticles surfaces were completely removed through a new treatment under ozone flow, at room temperature in air. Such an ozone cleaning method revealed an effective inexpensive dry process of removing organic contaminants from nanoparticles surfaces. The TiO 2 elongated nanoparticles having a length of 13.8 ± 5.5 nm and a diameter of 9.0 ±1.2 nm were characterized by powder X-Ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, selected area diffraction, BET surface area analyzer and FT-IR spectroscopy. Photocatalytic evaluation demonstrated that the as-synthesized ozone-cleaned TiO 2 nanoparticles and TiO 2 nanoparticles loaded with platinum possess excellent Rhodamine B performance with respect to both commercial spherical nanotitania P25 and P25 loaded with platinum. This could be attributed to the anatase phase purity, small size, large specific surface area and clean surfaces of the prepared nanoparticles.

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This study investigates the effects of commercial nanoparticles on thermal and mechanical performance of rigid polyurethane foams. Two different types of nanoparticles are considered as fillers, spherical titania and rod-shaped halloysite clay nanotubes. The aim of this study was to produce rigid polyurethane foams modified with titania nanocrystals and nanohalloysite in order to obtain polyurethanes with improved properties. The laboratory scale-up will be suitable for the production in many branches of industry, such as construction and automotive production. In particular, these foams, added with commercial nanoparticles, characterized by better thermal and mechanical properties, are mainly used in construction for thermal insulation of buildings. The fillers were dispersed in the components, bringing rates up to 10%. In these investigations, the improvement of the thermal properties occurs by adding nanoparticles in the range 4-8% of titania and halloysite. The mechanical properties instead have been observed an improvement starting from 6% of nanoparticles addition. All data are in agreement with scanning electron microscope observations that shown a decrease in the average cell size and an increase in the cell density by adding nanoparticles in foams.

In this paper, we demonstrate that nanoscale membrane electrode assemblies, functioning in a H 2 /O 2 fuel cell, can be fabricated by impregnation of anodic alumina porous membranes with Nafion® and phosphotungstic acid. Porous anodic alumina is potentially a promising material for thin-film micro power sources because of its ability to be manipulated in micro-machining operations. Alumina membranes (Whatman, 50 μm thick, and pore diameters of 200 nm) impregnated with the proton conductor were characterized by means of scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, and thermal analysis. The electrochemical characterization of the membrane electrode assemblies was carried out by recording the polarization curves of a hydrogen-oxygen 5 cm 2 fuel cell working at low temperatures (25÷80°C) in humid atmosphere. Our assemblies realized with alumina membranes filled with phosphotungstic acid and Nafion® reach respectively the peak powers of 20 and 4 mW/cm 2 at room temperature using hydrogen and oxygen as fuel and oxidizer.