Journal of Inorganic Materials is supervised by Chinese Academy of Sciences and sponsored by Shanghai Institute of Ceramics and Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Published by The Science Press and launched in 1986, it is a monthly journal with 112 pages per issue. It aims to report phased and final achievements of national key projects and the projects of National Natural Science Foundation of China. Its scope covers creative treaties on new inorganic non-metallic materials, including nano-inorganic materials, functional and structural ceramics, functional crystals, energy materials, biomaterials, solid thin film, special glass and inorganic composite. It aims at briefly reporting on achievement obtained at different stages, summarizing and reviewing on the progress of special areas or subjects of inorganic non-metallic materials, and new processes and new techniques.
The journal is included in CA, SCI, JST, EI, CSCD.
The model on the correlation between the birefringent scattering and in-line optical transmittance of transparent ceramics with uniaxial hexagonal crystal structure was established with ZnO as the research object based on Mie theory and its developed approximation Rayleigh-Gans-Debye scattering theory. The theoretical calculation indicates that the in-line optical transmittance of ZnO transparent ceramics improves obviously with the decrease in grain size and increase in orientation. The ZnO transparent ceramics which meet the microstructure requirements of the model were effectively controlled by the slip casting process under a strong magnetic field and designing spark plasma sintering (SPS) parameters. The corresponding results show that the in-line optical transmittance of non-textured ZnO transparent ceramic increases from 5.1% to 12.9% at 600 nm as thw grain size decreases from 1.72 μm to 0.66 μm while that of textured ZnO transparent ceramic (mean grain size 0.35 μm) is improved greatly from 21.6% to 36.6% at 600 nm due to increasing orientation factor from 4.0% to 24.7% calculated from XRD data. Based on these data, it is found that the calculation results of theoretical model match well with the experiment results.
The Pd/γ-Al
2O
3 and Pd/CeO
2/γ-Al
2O
3 catalysts with 0.03 wt% Pd loading were successfully synthesized via a simple direct-adsorption method, and evaluated for the oxidation of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). The morphology, structure, and surface properties of the synthesized samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), N
2 adsorption-desorption (BET method), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), temperature-programmed reduction of H
2 (H
2-TPR). The temperatures for conversion of 98% toluene, acetone and ethyl acetate over the Pd/CeO
2/γ-Al
2O
3 catalyst were 205 °C, 220 °C and 275 °C under the conditions of VOCs volume fraction at 0.1% and gas hourly space velocity (GHSV) at 18,000 mL/(g·h), respectively, which were 15 °C, 15 °C and 20 °C lower than those required by the Pd/γ-Al
2O
3 catalyst. The Pd/CeO
2/γ-Al
2O
3 exhibited outstanding catalytic activity, stability and selectivity even at high GHSV. The results indicated the addition of ceria to alumina influenced the physico-chemical properties of the materials and their catalytic activities. It also revealed that Pd/CeO
2/
γ-Al
2O
3 possessed Ce
3+ and high content of PdO, and the main active PdO species were well-dispersed on the surface of the
γ-Al
2O
3 support. In addition, the strong metal-support interaction between PdO and non-stoichiometric ceria enhanced the catalytic performance of the Pd/CeO
2/γ-Al
2O
3 for oxidation of VOCs.
Despite excellent catalytic capability, Cu
2O nanomaterial exhibits weak stability which limits its application. In this study, a novel kind of supported Cu
2O catalyst, Cu
2O/BNNSs-OH, with highly catalytic efficiency and stability was facilely fabricated via a controllable liquid phase reduction of ascorbic acid and an annealing process. Cu
2O/BNNSs-OH catalyst was synthesized by using boron nitride nanosheets (BNNSs), prepared by the “push-pull” effect of polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) and water phase change, as a supporter and spherical Cu
2O nanoparticles (2–7 nm) prepared by forward titration (ascorbic acid → Cu
2+, solution with a pH 11) as active components. The morphology and structure of as-obtained samples were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), high-resolution transmission electronic microscopy (HRTEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), and Raman spectroscopy. The results of the synthetic method showed that spherical Cu
2O nanoparticles were uniformly dispersed on the supporter surface and BNNSs displayed some stabilization effect on Cu
2O which could be prevented from being oxidized into CuO. Moreover, the catalytic activity was investigated by catalytic reduction reaction of 4-nitrophenol to 4-aminophenol. Cu
2O/BNNSs-OH with high catalytic activity similar to that of the noble metal catalyst for the reduction of 4-nitrophenol is highly reusable for five successive cycles without significant degradation and activity loss.
A novel kind of electrocatalytic oxygen evolution catalyst was fabricated by introducing g-C
3N
4 ultrathin films onto the surface of attapulgite (ATP) via a simple in-situ depositing technique combined with freeze-drying and programmed roasting process. The obtained product was identified as ATP/g-C
3N
4. In order to achieve the best catalyst, we prepared a series of ATP/g-C
3N
4 composites with different mass fractions of ATP and marked them as ATP/g-C
3N
4-
w, where
w represents the mass fraction of ATP [
w =
mATP:(
mATP +
mg-C
3N
4) = 0.33, 0.40, 0.50, 0.67]. The results show that g-C
3N
4 thin layers are uniformly loaded onto the ATP surface via the chemical bond (Si–O–C), which is beneficial to tailor the surface electronic structure of g-C
3N
4 and provide more active sites. Their electrocatalytic oxygen evolution properties in 0.1 mol/L KOH were investigated. It is found that ATP/g-C
3N
4-0.50 presents the best catalytic performance for oxygen evolution and has excellent oxygen evolution stability. Its oxygen evolution overpotential is 410 mV and the Tafel slope is 118 mV/dec at a current density of 10 mA/cm
2. The results suggest that ATP/g-C
3N
4-0.50 can be used as a potential oxygen evolution catalyst.
Bio-oil obtained from biomass can be used as an important raw material for hydrogen production. In this work, acetic acid (HAc) from bio-oil was selected as the model compound to produce hydrogen via auto-thermal reforming (ATR). Fe-promoted Co-based hydrotalcite-like Co
xAl
3Fe
yO
m±δ catalysts were prepared by co-precipitation method and characterized by XRD, N
2 physisorption, H
2-TPR and TG to study the relationship between the catalytic performance and structure within these catalysts. The characterization results show that hydrotalcite-like structures of (Co/Fe)
xAl
2CO
3(OH)
y·
zH
2O were obtained by co-precipitation, then transformed to alumina supported spinel structures, including CoAl
2O
4, Co
3O
4, Fe
3O
4, and FeAl
2O
4, after calcination. BJH analysis indicated that within these calcined Co
xAl
3Fe
yO
m±δ catalysts, there were mesoporous structures, in which Co
0.45Al
3Fe
0.4O
5.55±δ had the pore size distribution centered in 4 nm. As suggested by H
2-TPR and XRD, the reducibility of Co metal was enhanced by the Fe promoter, and there were CoFe alloys formed after reduction. In the stability test, the hydrogen yield reached 2.72 mol-H
2/mol-HAc and remained stable. Meanwhile, the CoFe alloy was also stable and no carbon deposit was detected after reaction, indicating that there was high resistance to oxidation and coking within the Fe-promoted Co
xAl
3Fe
yO
m±δ catalysts.
Solution method is a mild, controllable and commonly used synthetic method. However, the reported solution methods for the preparation of TiSe
2 nanosheets usually use trioctylphosphine (TOP) as solvent. TOP is poisonous and potentially harmful to the human body as well as the environment. In this paper, hexagonal TiSe
2 nanosheets were synthesized by simple solution method without TOP. The shape evolution of TiSe
2 nanosheets was investigated by adjusting the reaction time. The crystal phase, morphology, elements, and the optical property of TiSe
2 nanosheets were characterized by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, and UV-Vis spectroscopy, respectively. The spiral growth steps can be clearly observed in SEM images. A spiral layer-by-layer growth mechanism was proposed based on the morphology evolution of TiSe
2 nanosheets. The photocatalytic activity of TiSe
2 nanosheets was evaluated by the degradation of RhB under sun light irradiation. Compared with the commercial P25, the as-prepared TiSe
2 nanosheets exhibit a superior photocatalytic activity, which indicates that TiSe
2 nanosheets are a promising candidate as photocatalytic material for environmental protection.
Flexible self-supporting TbW
10-Agarose composite thin films were prepared by combination of sol-gel and casting technique based on the functional complementarity between excellent green luminescence polyoxometalate TbW
10 and good film-forming matrix agarose. Composition and structure of the films were characterized by FT-IR and Raman spectra. Their thickness, surface roughness and microstructure were studied by SEM, AFM and TEM, respectively. The effects of TbW
10 content on the transmittance and luminescence properties were investigated. On this basis, the reversible chemically responsive luminescent switching performance of TbW
10-Agarose green-emission thin film was realized under stimulation of HCl and NH
3. The response time and reversibility of chemically responsive luminescent switching performance were studied by fluorescence kinetics curves. The fluorescence spectrum detection for HCl gas was achieved based on the green-emission thin film sensor with a detection limit of 0.273 1 mmol·L
–1.
