Soy protein has been considered as an alternative to partly replace petroleum-based polymers for adhesive applications. The weakness of protein-based adhesive is poor water resistance, which limits its outdoor applications. The objective of this research was to improve the water resistance of soy protein adhesive by introducing crosslinkage between amino groups of amino acid residue. Laboratory prepared soy protein isolate (SPI) was used in this study. Glutaraldehyde at concentrations of 4, 20, 40, and 80 mM was used as the crosslinking reagent for SPI modification. Adhesive properties of soy protein modified by glutaraldehyde, as well as thermal and morphological properties, were investigated. Crosslinking-induced protein conformation and structure changes through decrease of amino groups and adding of hydrophobic groups, subsequently affect adhesive performance of SPI. At optimum glutaraldehyde concentration (20 mM), dry, wet, and soak strengths of modified SPI increased to 31.5, 115, and 29.7%, respectively, compared with unmodified SPI.

A broadband metamaterial absorber (MA) based on lumped elements is presented, which is composed of the dielectric substrate sandwiched with metal split-coin resonators (SCR) welded with lumped elements and continuous metal film. We simulated, fabricated, and measured the lumped elements MA. Compared with the single SCR structure MA, the composite MA loaded with lumped elements has a wider absorptivity and works in a lower frequency. The experiment results show that the bandwidth of absorption of 90% is about 1.5 GHz and the full width at half maximum (FWHM) can be up to 50%, the absorptivity is also nearly unchanged for different polarizations. The further simulations of the absorptivity of composite MA with different lumped resistances and capacitances indicate that there exist optimal values for lumped resistances and capacitances, where the absorptivity is the highest and the bandwidth is the widest.

A class of amphiphilic rod−rod diblock copolymers composed of hydrophilic π-conjugated poly(3triethylene glycol thiophene) (P3(TEG)T) and hydrophobic rigid-rod-like poly(phenyl isocyanide) (PPI) was synthesized in one pot via mechanistically distinct, sequential block copolymerization with Ni(dppp)Cl 2 as a single catalyst. The hydrophilic P3(TEG)T homopolymer self-assembled into well-defined nanoparticles in THF and methanol with different dimensions and exhibited orange-light emission in THF and red-light emission in methanol. Interestingly, the resultant P3(TEG)T-b-PPI block copolymers were found to self-assembled into various well-defined supramolecular structures, such as nanofibrils in THF, micelles in methanol, and vesicles in 3/2 mixtures of THF and methanol. The assemblies of these block copolymers in solutions exhibited unique light emissions with the emission color spanned widely from orange red to blue depending on self-assembled morphology and solvents used. White light emission can be readily achieved through the control of self-assembled morphologies by variation on the solvent composition. Moreover, the light emissions of the block copolymers were completely reversible, demonstrating the tunable emissions were indeed ascribed to the morphological transitions of the block copolymer.

Mechanism and sensing applications of antiresonant reflecting guidance in an alcohol-filled simplified hollow-core (SHC) photonic crystal fiber (PCF) are demonstrated. By filling one air hole in the air cladding of the PCF with alcohol, anti-resonant reflecting guidance of light can be achieved and energy leakage of the core modes can be induced at resonant wavelengths of the Fabry-Pérot (F-P) resonator formed by the alcohol-filled layer combined with the silica cladding in the cross-section of the PCF. The proposed structure exhibits periodic lossy dips in the transmission spectrum, of which the visibilities are sensitive to the refractive index of surrounding medium due to the reflectivity variation of the F-P resonator. Water level sensing is experimentally realized with this principle and the lossy dip exhibits a linear decrease against water level with a sensitivity of 1.1 dB/mm. The sensor is also sensitive to environmental temperature and a temperature sensitivity of -0.48 nm/°C is obtained between room temperature and 60 °C.

The electrocatalytic activity of carbon-based non-precious metal composites towards oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is far from that of the recognized Pt/C catalyst. Thus, it is necessary to exploit novel catalysts based on multicomponent carbon-based composites with both high activity and high stability. Herein, a bottom-up strategy was used for constructing bamboo-like N-doped graphitic CNTs with a few encapsulated Co and VN nanoparticles (namely, NGT-CoV) by adopting melamine as both a nitrogen source and a carbon source. During the synthesis, melamine initially coordinated with cobalt and vanadium ions and then decomposed into carbon nitride nanosheet structures. Simultaneously, cobalt ions/clusters were converted into metal nanocatalysts by the reduced gases that were generated, which further rearranged the carbon nitride nanostructures to form N-doped CNTs. The presence of vanadium species strengthened the electronic structure and increased the contents of Co and N species by enhancing the interactions among Co and N species. The optimized NGT-CoV-45-900 exhibited an E of 0.92 V (vs. RHE), an E of 0.81 V (vs. RHE), and a Tafel slope of 66.1 mV dec in the ORR. It also displayed much higher durability (a negative shift in E of only 11 mV after 10 000 cycles) and methanol tolerance than a commercial Pt/C catalyst. The excellent performance should be attributed to the high exposure level of active sites that originated from Co-N, VN and N-doped bamboo-like graphitic CNTs. Moreover, the skeleton composed of hollow graphitic ultra-long CNTs could not only provide smooth mass transport pathways but also facilitate fast electron transfer.