碳纳米管膜的高温纯化研究

为了获得纯度更高的碳纳米管膜, 保证材料发热稳定性, 需要对通过化学气相沉积法得到的碳纳米管膜进行二次纯化. 通过使用高温纯化炉, 在真空状态下, 从1700℃到3200℃分7挡温度对碳纳米管进行纯化, 并对其含碳量和方块电阻进行比较. 结果表明, 高温纯化后的碳纳米管膜含碳量从95.0%提高到99.9%, 解决了含碳量低的问题. 同时, 在高温纯化中发现碳纳米管膜方块电阻从纯化前3Ω降低到0.5Ω, 方块电阻的降低对碳纳米管膜具有十分重要的意义, 同样对碳纳米管膜后续产品的开发也有重要作用.     

Detecting pore size distribution of activated carbon by low-field nuclear magnetic resonance

In this study, the transverse relaxation time (T₂) of activated carbon (AC) in different relative environment humidity was detected firstly by low-field nuclear magnetic resonance (LFNMR). The pore size (diameter) of AC distributions was calculated by the relationship between T₂ and surface relaxation rate (ρ), where ρ was obtained by the detection of nine porous materials with known pore size. The results showed that the pore size distributions of AC calculated by ρ < 0.19 nm/ms were in good agreement with that obtained by nitrogen adsorption method and proved that LFNMR as a new detection method was feasible for characterizing AC pore size distribution.     

新型功能碳材料的高压截获

高性能功能材料在诸多领域具有广泛的应用前景,是人们一直关注的研究热点。高压可以有效地改变物质的原子间距和成键方式,是获得新型功能材料的重要途径。在碳材料的高压研究中,许多有趣的功能碳材料,如光学透明碳、高强度弹性碳和超硬非晶碳等,已经通过不同的碳前驱体合成。本文简要介绍了作者近年来在低维碳基纳米复合材料高压研究中取得的进展,基于设计的不同低维碳前驱体,高压下截获了具有超硬特性、新型压致共价聚合及发光增强的碳材料。     

Revealing the Effect of Surface Composition on Multiwalled Carbon Nanotubes Supported Pt-Fe Alloy Electrocatalysts for Methanol Oxidation Performance

The designs of efficient and inexpensive Pt-based catalysts for methanol oxidation reaction (MOR) are essential to boost the commercialization of direct methanol fuel cells. Here, the highly catalytic performance PtFe alloys supported on multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) decorating nitrogen-doped carbon (NC) have been successfully prepared via co-engineering of the surface composition and electronic structure. The Pt₁Fe₃@NC/MWCNTs catalyst with moderate Fe³⁺ feeding content (0.86 mA/mg_Pt) exhibits 2.26-fold enhancement in MOR mass activity compared to pristine Pt/C catalyst (0.38 mA/mg_Pt). Furthermore, the CO oxidation initial potential of Pt₁Fe₃@NC/MWCNTs catalyst is lower relative to Pt/C catalyst (0.71 V and 0.80 V). Benefited from the optimal surface compositions, the anti-corrosion ability of MWCNT, strong electron interaction between PtFe alloys and MWCNTs and the N-doped carbon (NC) layer, the Pt₁Fe₃@NC/MWCNTs catalyst presents an improved MOR performance and anti-CO poisoning ability. This study would open up new perspective for designing efficient electrocatalysts for the DMFCs field.     

Effect of sodium dodecyl sulfate on CO2 and H2S absorption enhancement of functionalized multiwall carbon nanotubes in water: Experimental study and empirical model

A single bubble absorption column was used to examine the effect of hydrodynamic on carbon dioxide (CO₂) and hydrogen sulfide (H₂S) absorption in pure water and water-based nanofluids dispersed with neat, and OH and NH₂ functionalized multiwall carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs). Sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) was used as a surfactant and stabilizer. The maximum absorption of CO₂ and H₂S were found to be 0.0038 mmol/m²·s and 0.056 mmol/m²·s using NH₂-MWCNTs /nanofluid with 0.5 wt% content, respectively. The diffusion coefficients of gases into the nanofluids were computed by using an equation attained based on Dankwert’s theory. A last, an empirical correlation was proposed to determine the Sherwood number for the absorption of the aforementioned gases into the nanofluids.     

Sonochemical conversion of CO2 into hydrocarbons: The Sabatier reaction at ambient conditions

In this study, we investigated an alternative method for the chemical CO₂ reduction reaction in which power ultrasound (488 kHz ultrasonic plate transducer) was applied to CO₂-saturated (up to 3%) pure water, NaCl and synthetic seawater solutions. Under ultrasonic conditions, the converted CO₂ products were found to be mainly CH₄, C₂H₄ and C₂H₆ including large amount of CO which was subsequently converted into CH₄. We have found that introducing molecular H₂ plays a crucial role in the CO₂ conversion process and that increasing hydrogen concentration increased the yields of hydrocarbons. However, it was observed that at higher hydrogen concentrations, the overall conversion decreased since hydrogen, a diatomic gas, is known to decrease cavitational activity in liquids. It was also found that 1.0 M NaCl solutions saturated with 2% CO₂ + 98% H₂ led to maximum hydrocarbon yields (close to 5%) and increasing the salt concentrations further decreased the yield of hydrocarbons due to the combined physical and chemical effects of ultrasound. It was shown that CO₂ present in a synthetic industrial flue gas (86.74% N₂, 13% CO₂, 0.2% O₂ and 600 ppm of CO) could be converted into hydrocarbons through this method by diluting the flue gas with hydrogen. Moreover, it was observed that in addition to pure water, synthetic seawater can also be used as an ultrasonicating media for the sonochemical process where the presence of NaCl improves the yields of hydrocarbons by ca. 40%. We have also shown that by using low frequency high-power ultrasound in the absence of catalysts, it is possible to carry out the conversion process at ambient conditions i.e., at room temperature and pressure. We are postulating that each cavitation bubble formed during ultrasonication act as a “micro-reactor” where the so-called Sabatier reaction -$C{O}_2+4H_2\stackrel{\mathit{Ultrasonication}}{\to }C{H}_4+2H_{2}O$ - takes place upon collapse of the bubble. We are naming this novel approach as the “Islam-Pollet-Hihn process”.     

石墨基液流电池复合双极板

液流电池是一种安全性高、使用寿命长、可扩展的大规模储能系统,可以协助电网调峰储能,提高能源利用率,发展前景广阔。双极板是液流电池的重要组成部分。功能上起到了分隔、串联电池、传导电流、为电堆提供结构支撑等作用。从成本构成角度看,双极板的价格占电堆成本的比重也较大。开发高性能、低成本的双极板对加快液流电池的商业化应用具有重要意义,也是目前业界的迫切需求。虽然文献上报道了许多针对液流电池双极板开发的工作,但是目前高性能、低成本的液流电池双极板产品仍无法充分满足市场需求。本文着重介绍了石墨基复合双极板的研究现状,介绍了材料选择、工艺流程对关键性能的影响,对相关工作进行了评述,并为液流电池双极板的开发提出了建议。     

Mechanism of BPh3-Catalyzed N-Methylation of Amines with CO2 and Phenylsilane: Cooperative Activation of Hydrosilane

BPh₃ catalyzes the N-methylation of secondary amines and the C-methylenation (methylene-bridge formation between aromatic rings) of N,N-dimethylanilines or 1-methylindoles in the presence of CO₂ and PhSiH₃; these reactions proceed at 30–40 °C under solvent-free conditions. In contrast, B(C₆F₅)₃ shows little or no activity. ¹¹B NMR spectra suggested the generation of [HBPh₃]⁻. The detailed mechanism of the BPh₃-catalyzed N-methylation of N-methylaniline ( 1 ) with CO₂ and PhSiH₃ was studied by using DFT calculations. BPh₃ promotes the conversion of two substrates (N-methylaniline and CO₂) into a zwitterionic carbamate to give three-component species [Ph(Me)(H)N⁺CO₂⁻⋅⋅⋅BPh₃]. The carbamate and BPh₃ act as the nucleophile and Lewis acid, respectively, for the activation of PhSiH₃ to generate [HBPh₃]⁻, which is used to produce key CO₂-derived species, such as silyl formate and bis(silyl)acetal, essential for the N-methylation of 1 . DFT calculations also suggested other mechanisms involving water for the generation of [HBPh₃]⁻ species.     

Chemical bonding in representative astrophysically relevant neutral,cation, and anion HCnH chains

Most existing studies assign a polyynic and cumulenic character of chemical bonding in carbon-based chains relying on values of the bond lengths. Building on our recent work, in this paper we add further evidence on the limitations of such an analysis and demonstrate the significant insight gained via natural bond analysis. Presently reported results include atomic charges, natural bond order and valence indices obtained from ab initio computations for representative members of the astrophysically relevant neutral and charged HC_2k/2k+1H chain family. They unravel a series of counter-intuitive aspects and/or help naive intuition in properly understanding microscopic processes, e.g., electron removal from or electron attachment to a neutral chain. Demonstrating that the Wiberg indices adequately quantify the chemical bonding structure of the HC_2k/2k+1H chains—while the often heavily advertised Mayer indices do not—represents an important message conveyed by the present study.     

A branch-and-bound method for the minimum k−enclosing ball problem

The minimum k-enclosing ball problem seeks the ball with smallest radius that contains at least k of m given points. This problem is NP-hard. We present a branch-and-bound algorithm on the tree of the subsets of k points to solve this problem. Our method is able to solve the problem exactly in a short amount of time for small and medium sized datasets.