An ordinary silica gel (SG-1) was chosen as the raw material and hydrophobically modified with trimethylchlorosilane under different microwave exposure. The orthogonal experiment was designed to screen the optimized modification method. The hydrophobic properties modified silica gel (SG-2) was analyzed by comparing the difference changes of surface chemistries. Then, the adsorption capacities of SG-1 and SG-2 to the n-hexane vapor and water vapor, respectively, were investigated and compared with the capacities of activated carbon and SG-3 (hydrophobically modified using the same composite modifier without microwave exposure). Meanwhile, there cyclable adsorptions of SG-2 to the two vapors were conducted while the desorptions of vacuum and heat was observed. The results showed that the effect of hydrophobic modification to SG-1 under microwave exposure was obvious and SG-2 also had a very good effect of adsorption for the n-hexane vapor. The modified silica gel shows great potential and effect for the recovery of volatile organic compounds with high content of water.

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Transition metal sulfide films Co−S, Mo−S, and Ni−S have been deposited by spin‐coating their precursor solutions followed by a mild thermal treatment. X‐ray diffraction results and X‐ray photoelectron spectrum demonstrate that the solution‐processed Co−S, Mo−S, and Ni−S are composed of CoS2, MoS2, and NiS with NiS2, respectively. Electrochemical characterizations reveal these sulfide films deposited on fluorine doped tin oxide (FTO) glasses as counter electrodes (CEs) show high catalytic activity to I3− species and good electrical conductivity compared to that of conventional Pt/FTO. Photo‐electric conversion efficiencies of 6.42 %, 5.82 %, and 5.72 % are obtained for the DSSCs adopting Co−S CE, Mo−S CE, and Ni−S CE, respectively, comparable to the device (6.59 %) employing Pt/FTO CE.