In this work, spongy graphene (SG), a shape-mouldable and nanoporous kinds of sorbent also increases, and the material with a high specific surface area used as a versatile and recyclable environmental and ecological risk of these sorbent material, is proposed and studied. SG shows highly effi cient absorp-polymers in application remains unclear.As an alternative to polymer, expanded tion of not only petroleum products and fats, but also toxic solvents such graphite (EG) has also been used to as toluene and chloroform (up to 86 times of its own weight), requiring no remove oil. Applying EG as an oil sorbent further pretreatment, which is tens of times higher than that of conventional was first done by Toyoda and Inagaki. [12,13] absorbers. Moreover, SG can be regenerated ( >10 times) by heat treatment, EG is a good absorber for crude oil and yielding the full release of adsorbates (>99%). The present work suggests SG

Humidity sensors have been extensively used in various fields, and numerous problems are encountered when using humidity sensors, including low sensitivity, long response and recovery times, and narrow humidity detection ranges. Using graphene oxide (G-O) films as humidity sensing materials, we fabricate here a microscale capacitive humidity sensor. Compared with conventional capacitive humidity sensors, the G-O based humidity sensor has a sensitivity of up to 37800% which is more than 10 times higher than that of the best one among conventional sensors at 15%–95% relative humidity. Moreover, our humidity sensor shows a fast response time (less than 1/4 of that of the conventional one) and recovery time (less than 1/2 of that of the conventional one). Therefore, G-O appears to be an ideal material for constructing humidity sensors with ultrahigh sensitivity for widespread applications.

Twisted carbon fiber (TCF) aerogel with good selective sorption is produced in large scale by using raw cotton as the precursor. TCF aerogel shows highly efficient sorption of organic liquids (pump oil: up to 192 times its own weight; chloroform: up to 115 times its own weight). Moreover, it could be regenerated many times without decrease of sorption capacity by distillation, combustion or squeezing, which depends on the type of pollutants.

In nanotechnology, small-volume metals with large surface area are used as electrodes, catalysts, interconnects and antennae. Their shape stability at room temperature has, however, been questioned. Using in situ high-resolution transmission electron microscopy, we find that Ag nanoparticles can be deformed like a liquid droplet but remain highly crystalline in the interior, with no sign of dislocation activity during deformation. Surface-diffusion-mediated pseudoelastic deformation is evident at room temperature, which can be driven by either an external force or capillary-energy minimization. Atomistic simulations confirm that such highly unusual Coble pseudoelasticity can indeed happen for sub-10-nm Ag particles at room temperature and at timescales from seconds to months.