Systematic Modulation of Thiol Functionalities in Inexpensive Porous Polymers for Effective Mercury Removal

Through accumulation, mercury contamination in aquatic systems still poses serious health risks despite the strict regulations on drinking water and industrial discharge. One effective strategy against this is adsorptive removal, in which a suitably functionalized porous material is added to water treatment protocols. Thiol (SH) group-grafted structures perform commendably; however, insufficient attention is paid to the cost, scalability, and reusability or how the arrangement of sulfur atoms could affect the Hg^II binding strength. We used an inexpensive and scalable porous covalent organic polymer (COP-130) to systematically introduce thiol functional groups with precise chain lengths and sulfur content. Thiol-functionalized COP-130 demonstrates enhanced wettability and excellent Hg^II uptake of up to 936 mg g⁻¹, with fast kinetics and exceptionally high selectivity. These Hg adsorbents are easily regenerated with HCl and can be used at least six times without loss of capacity even after treatment with strong acid, a rare performance in the domain of Hg-removal research.     

Differences of thermal decomposition behaviors and combustion properties between CL-20-based propellants and HMX-based solid propellants

Journal of Thermal Analysis and Calorimetry - Differences of thermal decomposition characteristics and combustion properties between CL-20-based propellants and HMX-based propellants were...     

Suppressing Strong Exciton–Phonon Coupling in Blue Perovskite Nanoplatelet Solids by Binary Systems

Quasi-two-dimensional (2D) perovskites are promising candidates for light generation owing to their high radiative rates. However, strong exciton–phonon interactions caused by mechanical softening of the surface act as a bottleneck in improving their suitability for a wide range of lighting and display applications. Moreover, it is not easily available to tune the phonon interactions in bulk films. Here, we adopt bottom-up fabricated blue emissive perovskite nanoplatelets (NPLs) as model systems to elucidate and as well as tune the phonon interactions via engineering of binary NPL solids. By optimizing component domains, the phonon coupling strength can be reduced by a factor of 2 driven by the delocalization of 2D excitons in out-of-plane orientations. It shows the picosecond energy transfer originated from the Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) efficiently competes with the exciton–phonon interactions in the binary system.     

High effects of smoke suppression and char formation of Ni?Mo/Mg(OH)2 for polypropylene

The Ni? Mo/Mg(OH)₂ (NMM) hybrid as an efficient flame retardancy and smoke suppression composite for polypropylene (PP) was synthesized through Ni? Mo co‐precipitation on the surface of Mg(OH)₂ (MH) hexagonal nanosheets. Compared to PP/MH, PP/NMM exhibited excellent smoke suppressing and flame retardancy on the heat release rate, total heat release, smoke production rate, total smoke production, CO production rate and total CO production with the same loading. The reduced hazard of PP/NMM was mainly attributed to the high physical barrier effect of compact char residues on heat, smoke and combustible gas. The mechanism study indicated that multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) generated from the catalytic carbonization of PP by the Ni? Mo compound could play the role of “rebar” to strengthen the char residues, avoid the generation of cracks and form highly compact char layer. Furthermore, MgO could facilitate the production of MWCNTs through changing the pyrolysis process of PP and increasing the reaction time between pyrolysis gas and Ni? Mo compound. Hence, the new Ni? Mo/MH catalyst hybrid may explore the potential for solving the tough problem of the flammability and heavy smoke of the polyolefins system.     

An incremental bundle method for portfolio selection problem under second-order stochastic dominance

Numerical Algorithms - We propose a preconditioner to accelerate the convergence of the GMRES iterative method for solving the system of linear equations obtained from discretize-then-optimize...     

The Influence of N,N-Dimethylformamide on Dispersion of Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotubes

Russian Journal of Physical Chemistry A - Preparation of highly homogeneous disperse ions multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) has vital effect on their applications. In this research, the...