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Functional aerogels composed of regenerated cellulose and tungsten oxide were fabricated by implanting tungsten-oxide nanodots into regenerated cellulose fiber. This superfast photochromic property benefitted from the small size and even distribution of tungsten oxide, which was caused by the confinement effect of the regenerated cellulose fiber. The composite was characterized using XRD and TEM to illustrate the successful loading of tungsten oxide. The composite turned from pale white to bright blue under ambient solar irradiation in five seconds. The evidence of solar absorption and electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) demonstrated the fast photochromic nature of the composite and its mechanism. Furthermore, carbon fiber filled with preferential growth tungsten-oxide nanorods was obtained by annealing the photochromic composite in a N2 atmosphere. This annealed product exhibited good absorption across the whole solar spectrum and revealed an excellent photothermal conversion performance. The water evaporation rate reached 1.75 kg m−2 h−1 under one sun illumination, which is 4.4 times higher than that of pure water. The photothermal conversion efficiency was 85%, which shows its potential application prospects in seawater desalination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chitosan (Cts), a positively charged natural polysaccharide, is employed to functionalize mesoporous titanium dioxide (mTiO2) nanoparticles. The prepared Cts/mTiO2 composite was used as a stationary phase to coat the inner wall of fused‐silica capillary and obtain uniform Cts/mTiO2 film. The Cts/mTiO2 film is applied to detect and enrich phosphopeptides in complex biological samples based on typical in‐tube solid phase microextraction (IT‐SPME) system. This unique Cts/mTiO2 film exhibits excellent enrichment performances of high selectivity (β‐casein and BSA in molar ratio of 1 : 1000), sensitivity (detection limit as low as 40 fmol of β‐casein tryptic digest solution) and high adsorption capacity (124.5 μg mg−1). Meanwhile, the Cts/mTiO2 film possesses preferable reusability and can be reused more than 10 times. These results confirm that the Cts/mTiO2 film possesses potential and satisfactory prospects in phosphoproteomics analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A MOF material has been grown on metallic transition metal nitride for electrocatalytic OER. The as-prepared hierarchical NiFe-MOF@Ni3N nano/microsheet array electrocatalyst exhibits a low overpotential of 281 mV at a current density of 200 mA cm−2 with a remarkable stability of 50 h. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Low-cost, efficient and stable electrocatalysts are required for large-scale production of hydrogen by industrial scale water electrolysis. We report here a hybrid bifunctional electrocatalyst, composed of amorphous NiFe LDH nanosheets and metallic Ni3N microsheet arrays grown on Ni foam for water splitting in alkaline electrolyte. This electrocatalyst possesses a typical 3D hierarchical heterostructure architecture and affords abundant exposed active sites. The strong coupling and synergistic effects between the NiFe LDH nanosheets and the Ni3N microsheet arrays provide a robust integrated structure and fast electron transfer. The superhydrophilic/superaerophobic properties of the electrocatalyst promote the mass transfer particularly at a large current density. By employing the NiFe LDH@Ni3N/NF as a bifunctional electrocatalyst for overall water splitting, an alkaline aqueous electrolyzer exhibits a low cell voltage of 1.80 V at a current density of 500 mA cm−2 with a remarkable durability of 100 h. The bifunctional NiFe LDH@Ni3N/NF electrocatalyst is a very promising candidate for scale-up industrial implementation of hydrogen production due to its excellent catalysis activity and high stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]