The effect of Cu doping on the mechanical and optical properties of zinc oxide nanowires synthesized by hydrothermal route.

Zinc oxide (ZnO) is a wide-bandgap semiconductor material with applications in a variety of fields such as electronics, optoelectronic and solar cells. However, much of these applications demand a reproducible, reliable and controllable synthesis method that takes special care of their functional properties. In this work ZnO and Cu-doped ZnO nanowires are obtained by an optimized hydrothermal method, following the promising results which ZnO nanostructures have shown in the past few years.

Structural analysis of water and carbon tetrachloride adsorbed in activated carbon fibres.

We report X-ray diffraction studies of water and carbon tetrachloride adsorbed in nanoporous activated carbon fibres. The fibres are built of turbostratic nanoparticles separated by quasi two-dimensional voids, forming narrow slit-shaped pores. In order to determine the structure of water within the pores and its influence on the fibres' structure, mean interatomic and intermolecular distances have been estimated from the positions of the maxima of the normalized angular distribution functions obtained by X-ray diffraction.