Gas-Directed Production of Noble Metal-Magnetic Heteronanostructures in Continuous Fashion: Application in Catalysis.

Complex nanomaterials produced by scale-up batch processes lack suitable control of shape, size distribution, chemical composition, and quality, because heat and mass transfer are seriously affected as the reactor volume increases. Here we use a novel continuous synthesis procedure, the active gas-liquid segmented flow, to produce noble metal-magnetic heteronanostructures with enormous interest in the fields of catalysis, biomedicine, environmental sensors, food monitoring, and chemical analysis. The microreactor technology proposed scales down the reaction volume to gain advantage of the large surface area to volume ratio with respect to conventional batch-type reactors, improving heat and mass transport and, consequently, promoting a uniform heating and mixing.

Constructing Straight Polyionic Liquid Microchannels for Fast Anhydrous Proton Transport.

Polymeric ionic liquids (PILs) have triggered great interest as all solid-state flexible electrolytes because of safety and superior thermal, chemical, and electrochemical stability. It is of great importance to fabricate highly conductive electrolyte membranes capable to operate above 120 °C under anhydrous conditions and in the absence of mineral acids, without sacrificing the mechanical behavior. Herein, the diminished dimensional and mechanical stability of poly[1-(3H-imidazolium)ethylene]bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide has been improved thanks to its infiltration on a polybenzimidale (PBI) support with specific pore architecture.

Spontaneous formation of Au-Pt alloyed nanoparticles using pure nano-counterparts as starters: a ligand and size dependent process.

In this work we investigate the formation of PtAu monodisperse alloyed nanoparticles by ageing pure metallic Au and Pt small nanoparticles (sNPs), nanoparticle size <5 nm, under certain conditions. We demonstrate that those bimetallic entities can be obtained by controlling the size of the initial metallic sNPs separately prepared and by selecting their appropriate capping agents. The formation of this spontaneous phenomenon was studied using HR-STEM, EDS, ionic conductivity, UV-Vis spectroscopy and cyclic voltammetry.