In this work, atomic layer deposition is applied to coat carbon nanocoils with magnetic Fe(3)O(4) or Ni. The coatings have a uniform and highly controlled thickness. The coated nanocoils with coaxial multilayer nanostructures exhibit remarkably improved microwave absorption properties compared to the pristine carbon nanocoils. The enhanced absorption ability arises from the efficient complementarity between complex permittivity and permeability, chiral morphology, and multilayer structure of the products. This method can be extended to exploit other composite materials benefiting from its convenient control of the impedance matching and combination of dielectric-magnetic multiple loss mechanisms for microwave absorption applications.

Highly efficient Ni nanoparticles deposited on CNTs were synthesized by atomic layer deposition used for hydrogen generation from AB hydrolysis.

Molecular layer deposition (MLD) is a processing technology for depositing ultrathin polymer or inorganic-organic hybrid films. It is a subset of atomic layer deposition (ALD) and has attracted tremendous attention because of its self-limiting nature, excellent conformality, chemical selectivity and low reaction temperature. [1][2][3][4][5][6] However, because of factors like low vapor pressure and thermal sensitivity of many organic molecules and poor understanding of vapor-phase organic coupling reactions, [7] the variety of combinations of organic and inorganic reactants that have been used for successful MLD is sparse. Up to now, only a few organic-inorganic polymer films, including alucone, [8][9][10][11] zincone, [12] and titanicone, [13,14] have been grown through MLD and those were mainly based on reactions between metal alkyl/chloride and glycol/glycerol. Given the great promise of MLD, it is highly demanded to develop new processing strategies for MLD.One important aspect for producing a larger range of organic-inorganic mixtures is the variability of compositions of the constituting organic and inorganic fractions of the resulting films. A limitation to rather short organic spacers, such as glycol, between the metal ions is a bottleneck for the synthesis of films with a broader range of organic-inorganic volume ratios. By designing new processing strategies for the organic component, the properties of the resulting films can be more easily tuned by varying their composition. These organic-inorganic hybrid films can be further used to produce porous metal oxide films by removing the organic component and the porosity of the resulting inorganic films will depend on the volume occupied by the organic constituting part, making such films attractive for many applications such as catalysis, separation, sensing, and energy conversion and storage.As an important semiconductor, TiO 2 has been intensely investigated using various ALD processes for its evident application potential in solar-energy devices, environmental remediation, and as catalyst support. [15][16][17][18][19][20] However, due to the ALD growth characteristics these TiO 2 films are intrinsically pinhole-free with low specific surface areas, resulting in low photocatalytic activity. [19,20] Recently, the research groups of George, Yerushalmi, and our group reported nearly in parallel the successful preparation of porous TiO 2 by annealing or UV exposure of Ti-containing hybrid organic-inorganic films (titanicones) produced by MLD using TiCl 4 and glycol or glycerol as reactants. [13,14,21] However, their activity is only efficient with ultraviolet light irradiation because of the wide band gap of TiO 2 (3.2 eV for anatase). Therefore, developing new MLD processes to grow porous TiO 2 films with visible light response and larger surface area is very welcome for such applications.Herein, we demonstrate a novel MLD process for preparing porous N-doped TiO 2 films. The process is based on a new strategy, a four-step ABCB reaction sequence using titan...

Water-compatible molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) for adsorbing bisphenol A (BPA) in aqueous solutions are synthesized using water-soluble monomer as surface hydrophilicity-increasing agent via surface addition−fragmentation chain transfer polymerization. The formation and structure of these hybrid materials are verified by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, contact angle studies, thermogravimetric analysis, and scanning electron microscopy. The characterization and adsorption results indicate that the molecularly imprinted polymers prepared with 2-acrylamido-2-methylpropanesulfonic acid (AMPS/MIPs) are water-compatible (the contact angle is 14°). The excellent dispersion of AMPS/MIPs in water provides more opportunity for BPA molecules to access the imprinted cavities and improves their recognition characteristics. The kinetics and isotherm data of AMPS/MIPs can be well described by the pseudo-second-order kinetic model and the Langmuir isotherm, respectively. The thermodynamic studies indicate that the adsorption process is a spontaneous exothermic process.