Regulating Chemisorption and Electrosorption Activity for Efficient Uptake of Rare Earth Elements in Low Concentration on Oxygen-Doped Molybdenum Disulfide.

Recovery of rare earth elements (REEs) with trace amount in environmental applications and nuclear energy is becoming an increasingly urgent issue due to their genotoxicity and important role in society. Here, highly efficient recovery of low-concentration REEs from aqueous solutions by an enhanced chemisorption and electrosorption process of oxygen-doped molybdenum disulfide (O-doped MoS) electrodes is performed. All REEs could be extremely recovered through a chemisorption and electrosorption coupling (CEC) method, and sorption behaviors were related with their outer-shell electrons.

Brownian motion on an out-of-thermal-equilibrium surface.

The motion of colloidal species on an out-of-thermal equilibrium surface is studied experimentally by optical microscopy. Water droplets of size in the micrometer range, spontaneously formed at a spherical-like interface between water and oil, are the colloidal species. The interface appears as a convex meniscus when putting water on oil with an added nonionic surfactant.

Rotational and translational microrheology from shape-anisotropic particles.

In this work, we report measurements of the mean squared angular and translational displacements of a colloidal dumbbell immersed in a viscoelastic fluid using digital microscopy. From the mean squared displacements, we obtain the mechanical properties of the media. Both angular and translational motions provide the same viscoelastic complex modulus and agree with that obtained from the translational motion of a spherical probe particle.

Actin protein inside DMPC GUVs and its mechanical response to AC electric fields.

Cells are dynamic systems with complex mechanical properties, regulated by the presence of different species of proteins capable to assemble (and disassemble) into filamentous forms as required by different cells functions. Giant unilamellar vesicles (GUVs) of DMPC (1,2-dimyristoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine) are systems frequently used as a simplified model of cells because they offer the possibility of assaying separately different stimuli, which is no possible in living cells. Here we present a study of the effect of acting protein on mechanical properties of GUVs, when the protein is inside the vesicles in either monomeric G-actin or filamentous F-actin.

Particle/wall electroviscous effects at the micron scale: comparison between experiments, analytical and numerical models.

We report a experimental study of the motion of 1 m single particles interacting with functionalized walls at low and moderate ionic strengths conditions. The 3D particle's trajectories were obtained by analyzing the diffracted particle images (point spread function). The studied particle/wall systems include negatively charged particles interacting with bare glass, glass covered with polyelectrolytes and glass covered with a lipid monolayer.