α-FeOOH nanorods having uniform morphology were synthesized by water bath process. X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy revealed that the single-crystalline orthorhombic α-FeOOH nanorods are about 10 nm in diameter and hundreds of nanometer in length. The effect of concentration of KOH on morphology of α-FeOOH nanorods was investigated. pH values of solution play an important role in the process of transformation of ferrihydrite into goethite. The inconsistent growth rate along different facets can be effected by pH values of the solution. The influence and growth mechanism of α-FeOOH nanorods were discussed in detail. This method may be widely used as reference to fabricate other inorganic onedimensional nanostructured materials and easily realized in industrial-scale synthesis.

Citric acid-neopentylene glycol-citric acid (CNC) triblock claw molecule as a fuel additive was applied as a diesel fuel low-temperature flow improver. Some of the other molecules-such as stearic acid and hexadecyl alcohol-are trapped with the above-synthesized claw molecule. The claw molecule, which is hydrophilic before the other molecules trapped into the suitable sites of the claw molecule, becomes soluble in diesel fuel. The claw molecule structure was further confirmed by 1 H NMR and IR spectra. The cold filter plugging point of diesel of adding the claw molecule was measured and discussed. The experimental results showed that the newly developed low-temperature flow improver has a good sensibility to diesel of different batches and different composition. When dosage is 600 g/g, the reduction value of cold filter plugging point is up to 6 units.

A sample and scalable synthetic strategy was developed for the fabrication of nanocrystalline SiC (nc-SiC) thin film. Thin sheet of nanocrystalline diamond was deposited on Si substrate by hot filamentassisted plasma-enhanced chemical vapour deposition system (HF-PECVD). Further, the resulting carbonbased sheet was heated at 1200 °C to allow a solid state reaction between C and Si substrate to form the SiC thin films. The synthesized films mainly consist of β-SiC nanowires with diameters of about 50 nm and tens of micrometers long. The nanowires axes lie along the [1 1 1] direction and possess a high density of planar defects. The β-SiC nanowires thin films exhibit the strong photoluminescence (PL) peak at a wavelength of 400 nm, which is significantly shifted to the blue compared with the reported PL results of SiC materials. The blue shift may be ascribed to morphology, quantum size confinement effects of the nanomaterials and abundant structure defects that existed in the nanowires.

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