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The composites with interfacial self-healing ability are smart and promising materials in the future. Although some approaches have been used to heal the micro-cracks in composite materials, it is still a great challenge to develop a versatile strategy to fabricate multifunctional interface for self-healing. Here, boron nitride nanosheets (BN) are immobilized onto PBO fibers by facile polydopamine (PDA) chemistry. Benefiting from the photothermal effect of BN-PDA, the obtained surface layer displays interfacial self-healing properties under Xenon light irradiation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bimetallic surface alloys have been considered as an effective strategy to achieve better catalytic performance and to modify the work function of the substrate toward metal-gate electrode application. We perform a systematical investigation of Group 10 and Group 11 transition metals adsorption on Rh (111), Ru (0001) and W (110) surfaces with various coverages using first-principles method. Through comparing the Bader charge results and the plots of work function shift, it is found that the polarization effect plays an important role in modification of the bimetallic surface work functions rather than the charge transfer effect especially at low coverages. The coverage-dependent work function behavior gives a general feature: as it has a large negative shift at 0.25ML coverage, then increases almost linearly with the coverage and followed by a saturation value which is controlled by the lattice strain. It is also found that the metal over-layer growth modes are correlated with the specific features of the coverage-dependent metal-substrate adhesion energy. All these findings may give some guidelines for the bimetallic catalysts design in terms of growth, stability and activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Halides are often present at electrochemical environment, they can directly influence the electrode potential or zero charge potential through the induced work-function change. In this work, we focused in particular on the halogen-induced work function change as a function of the coverage of fluorine, chlorine, bromine and iodine on Al 2 Au and Al 2 Pt (110) surfaces. Results show that the real relation between work function change and dipole moment change for halogens adsorption on intermetallic surfaces is just a common linear relationship rather than a directly proportion. Besides, the different slopes between fitted lines and the theoretical slope employed in pure metal surfaces demonstrating that the halogens adsorption on intermetallic surfaces are more complicated. We also present a weight parameter β to describe different factors effect on work function shift and finally qualify which factor dominates the shift direction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hafnium carbide (HfC) is regarded as one of the most promising cathode materials for field emission. But the experimental results did not provide a detail picture of the surface properties. In this work, we perform an ab initio study of the surface energies and work functions for the (1 0 0), (1 1 0), (1 1 1), (2 1 0), (3 1 0) and (3 1 1) surfaces of hafnium carbide. For the polar surface of (1 1 1) and (3 1 1) plane, a new method is taken to calculate the surface energy of the different surface terminations. The results indicate that the Hf termination surface is most stable, which are consistent with the experimental results. Additionally, we focused in particular on oxygen atom induced work function changes on HfC(1 1 1) plane as a function of coverage. An unexpected decrease of the work function is found at low coverage, and a reasonable resolution for this anomaly is given based on the method of Roman et al. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The hybrid structure of 2D BiOBr nanosheets planting on 1D SiC whiskers was designed. • BiOBr/SiCw could effectively degrade RhB of 98% within 15 min and tetracycline hydrochloride of 60% within 60 min. • The photocatalyst exhibited excellent reusability and stability. Although BiOBr exhibits unique layer structures and good visible light response features as photocatalysts, it has been limited by low surface area and poor carries separation. Herein, a simple hydrothermal approach is reported for planting 2D BiOBr nanosheets on 1D SiC whiskers to obtain the binary hybrid structure. By further controlling the hydrothermal temperature, the loading content of BiOBr on SiC whiskers surface, the band structure of BiOBr/SiCw hybrids could be finely tuned to optimize photodegradation activity. Results demonstrate that the construction of BiOBr/SiC hybrid structure not only increases surface area to provide more activity sites, but also improves photo-induced carriers transfer for strengthening the separation of the photo-induced carrier, which favors photodegradation activity. More importantly, the electron spin resonance and capture experiment reveals that holes are the main species responsible for the oxidation of contaminants. Benefited from the above characteristics, the optimized BS160 exhibits efficient photodegradation ability, where 97% Rhodamine B (RhB) is eliminated after 15 min and 60% tetracycline hydrochloride is degraded after 60 min under visible light irradiation, respectively. Moreover, the optimized BS160 also displays excellent photocatalytic stability after 5 reusability cycles. This work paves a new route for the development of photocatalysts based on BiOBr. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]