Scalable Fabrication of Superhydrophobic Coating with Rough Coral Reef-Like Structures for Efficient Self-Cleaning and Oil-Water Separation: An Experimental and Molecular Dynamics Simulation Study.

Superhydrophobic coating has a great application prospect in self-cleaning and oil-water separation but remains challenging for large-scale preparation of robust and weather-resistant superhydrophobic coatings via facile approaches. Herein, this work reports a scalable fabrication of weather-resistant superhydrophobic coating with multiscale rough coral reef-like structures by spraying the suspension containing superhydrophobic silica nanoparticles and industrial coating varnish on various substrates. The coral reef-like structures effectively improves the surface roughness and abrasion resistance.

Stable FeO submicrospheres with SiO coating for heterogeneous Fenton-like reaction at alkaline condition.

In the traditional Fenton process, the efficient generation of hydroxyl radical (HO) strongly relies on an acidic circumstance and the iron ions would precipitate and form large amounts of hazardous iron-containing sludge at alkaline pH. To realize stable heterogeneous Fenton-like catalytic degradation at alkaline condition, FeO submicrospheres with SiO coating were successfully synthesized by using water glass as the silica sources via a facile ultrasound assisted method. The as-obtained FeO@SiO spheres were further used as catalysts for the Fenton-like degradation of tetracycline hydrochloride (TC).

Synthesis and structural characteristics of high surface area TiO aerogels by ultrasonic-assisted sol-gel method.

TiO aerogel is a unique three-dimensional porous nano-particle material with the characteristics of high specific surface area and good light transmittance. In this paper, a novel method involving ultrasonic-assisted sol-gel, solvent exchange, and vacuum drying was successfully developed to synthesis the TiO aerogel. The morphology and properties of the prepared TiO aerogels were characterized by the Brunauer-Emmett-Teller theory (BET), x-ray diffraction, field-emission scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis-differential thermal analysis, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and Raman spectroscopy.