No abstract

The porous three-dimensional (3-D) flower structures assembled by numerous ultrathin flakes were favor for strengthen electromagnetic absorption capability. However, it still remains a big challenge to fabricate such kind of materials. In this study, an easy and flexible two-step method consisting of hydrothermal and subsequent annealing process have been developed to synthesize the porous 3-D flower-like Co/CoO. Interestingly, we found that the suitable heat treatment temperature played a vital role on the flower-like structure, composition, and electromagnetic absorption properties. In detail, only in the composite treated with 400 °C can we gain the porous 3-D flower structure. If the annealing temperature were heated to 300 °C, the Co element was unable to generate. Moreover, when the annealing temperature increased from 400 to 500 °C, these flower-like structures were unable to be kept because the enlarged porous diameter would wreck the flower frame. Moreover, these 3-D porous flower-like structures presented outstanding electromagnetic absorption properties. For example, such special structure enabled an optimal reflection loss value of -50 dB with the frequency bandwidth ranged from 13.8 to 18 GHz. The excellent microwave absorption performance may attribute to the high impedance matching behavior and novel dielectric loss ability. Additionally, it can be supposed that this micrometer-size flower structure was more beneficial to scatter the incident electromagnetic wave. Meanwhile, the rough surface of the ultrathin flake is apt to increase the electromagnetic scattering among the leaves of the flower due to their large spacing and porous features.

The rod-like structure of MnO2@Fe is apt to convert the electromagnetic wave to microcurrent and then attenuate it.

We have built a high-resolution differential surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensor for heavy metal ion detection. The sensor surface is divided into a reference and sensing areas, and the difference in the SPR angles from the two areas is detected with a quadrant cell photodetector as a differential signal. In the presence of metal ions, the differential signal changes due to specific binding of the metal ions onto the sensing area coated with properly selected peptides, which provides an accurate real-time measurement and quantification of the metal ions. Selective detection of Cu2+ and Ni2+ in the ppt-ppb range was achieved by coating the sensing surface with peptides NH2-Gly-Gly-His-COOH and NH2-(His)6-COOH. Cu2+ in drinking water was tested using this sensor.