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The Ti film with special structure was deposited onto glass substrate by magnetron sputtering, then via the process of electrochemical anodization and annealing, a transparent TiO2 nanoporous coating (denoted as TNP) with high photocatalytic activity can be directly formed on glass substrate. The crystal structure of the TNP was detected by X-ray diffractometry (XRD) and the morphology of the coating was observed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The transmittance, wettability and adhesion of TNP were investigated by UV-Vis spectrophotometer, contact angle meter and scratch tester respectively. Finally, the photocatalytic activity of TNP was evaluated by degradation of methylene blue solution under UV illumination. The results show that the prepared TNP coating has a nanoporous structure and only anatase can be found after annealing, the transmittance of TNP coating can reach 80% or more in visible region, with a super hydrophilic surface (contact angleC0=1×10-5mol/L) can reach 94% in 2 hours and the photocatalysis reaction rate constant is 1.47h-1.

We report the acoustic imaging frequency dynamics of ferroelectric domains by low-frequency acoustic probe microscopy based on the commercial atomic force microscopy It is found that ferroelectric domain could be firstly visualized at lower frequency down to 0.5 kHz by AFM-based acoustic microscopy The frequency-dependent acoustic signal revealed a strong acoustic response in the frequency range from 7kHz to 10kHz, and reached maximum at 8.1kHz. The acoustic contrast mechanism can be ascribed to the different elastic response of ferroelectric microstructures to local elastic stress fields, which is induced by the acoustic wave transmitting in the sample when the piezoelectric transducer is vibrating and exciting acoustic wave under ac electric fields due to normal piezoelectric effects.

We report the application of customer-built scanning thermal microscopy (SThM) based on a commercial atomic force microscope to investigate local thermal inhomogeneity of ZnO varistors. The so-called 3ω method, generally used for measuring macroscale thermal conductivity, is set up and integrated with an atomic force microscope to probe the nanoscale thermal property. Remarkably, thermal contrasts of ZnO varistors are firstly imaged by the SThM, indicating the uniform distribution of spinel phases at triple points. The frequency-dependent thermal signal of ZnO varistors is also studied to present quantitative evaluation of local thermal conductivity of the sample.