Synthesis of sodium alginate/polyacrylamide photochromic hydrogels with quadruple crosslinked networks.

Photochromic hydrogels have great potential for inkless printing, smart display devices, anti-counterfeiting and encryption. However, the short information storage time limits their large-scale application. In this study, a sodium alginate/polyacrylamide photochromic hydrogel with ammonium molybdate as the color change factor was prepared. The addition of sodium alginate was beneficial to the improvement of the fracture stress and elongation at break. In particular, when the content of sodium alginate was 3%, the fracture stress increased from 20 kPa without sodium alginate to 62 kPa. Different photochromic effects and information storage times were achieved by regulating the calcium ion and ammonium molybdate concentration. And the hydrogel with an ammonium molybdate immersion concentration of 6% and calcium chloride immersion concentration of 10% can store information for up to 15 h. At the same time, the hydrogels were able to maintain their photochromic properties over five cycles of "information writing - erasure" and achieved "hunnu" encryption. Therefore, the hydrogel shows excellent information controllable erasure properties and encryption functions, indicating its broad application prospects.

Electrospinning Novel Sodium Alginate/MXene Nanofiber Membranes for Effective Adsorption of Methylene Blue.

Understanding how to develop highly efficient and robust adsorbents for the removal of organic dyes in wastewater is crucial in the face of the rapid development of industrialization. Herein, d-Ti3C2Tx nanosheets (MXene) were combined with sodium alginate (SA), followed by electrospinning and successive Ca2+-mediated crosslinking, giving rise to a series of SA/MXene nanofiber membranes (NMs). The effects of the MXene content of the NMs on the adsorption performance for methylene blue (MB) were investigated systemically. Under the optimum MXene content of 0.74 wt.%, SA/MXene NMs possessed an MB adsorption capacity of 440 mg/g, which is much higher than SA/MXene beads with the same MXene content, pristine MXene, or electrospinning SA NMs. Furthermore, the optimum SA/MXene NMs showed excellent reusability. After the adsorbent was reused ten times, both the MB adsorption capacity and removal rate could remain at 95% of the levels found in the fresh samples, which indicates that the electrospinning technique has great potential for developing biomass-based adsorbents with high efficiency.

Synchronous reduction-fixation of reducible heavy metals from aqueous solutions: Application of novel mesoporous MFT/SBA-15 composite materials.

The usual treatment for Cr(VI)-contaminated wastewater primarily included reduction, adsorption, and the subsequent separation of the Cr-laden adsorbent. Among these factors, the adsorbent is the most critical factor in determining Cr removal efficiency. In this study, a novel melamine-formaldehyde-thiourea (MFT) chelating resin/mesoporous silica composite material (MFT/SBA-15) was synthesized via a co-condensation method and used for the reduction and fixation of Cr(VI)-contaminated water. Cr(VI) adsorption onto MFT/SBA-15 obeyed the pseudo-second-order model, and the chemical adsorption was the rate-limiting step in the adsorption process. Also it followed the Langmuir adsorption model, with single molecular layer adsorption characteristics. The organic components within MFT/SBA-15 were the core functional groups for Cr(VI) adsorption, and the formation of a coordination bond (CS→Cr) between the lone electron pairs of the S atom and Cr during the adsorption process led to the synchronous reduction-fixation processes of Cr(VI). These synchronous effects were further demonstrated for other reducible heavy metals, including As(V) and Cu(II), but negligibly observed in chemically stable elements, such as Zn(II), Ni(II), Pb(II), Cd(II), and As(III). The novel mesoporous MFT/SBA-15 materials combine the advantages of the chelating resin and mesoporous silica and have excellent potential for the wastewater treatment of reducible heavy metals through synchronous reduction-fixation.

New insights into Keggin-type 12-tungstophosphoric acid from 31P MAS NMR analysis of absorbed trimethylphosphine oxide and DFT calculations.

The acid and transport properties of the anhydrous Keggin-type 12-tungstophosphoric acid (H(3)PW(12)O(40); HPW) have been studied by solid-state (31)P magic-angle spinning NMR of absorbed trimethylphosphine oxide (TMPO) in conjunction with DFT calculations. Accordingly, (31)P NMR resonances arising from various protonated complexes, such as TMPOH(+) and (TMPO)(2)H(+) adducts, could be unambiguously identified. It was found that thermal pretreatment of the sample at elevated temperatures (≥423 K) is a prerequisite for ensuring complete penetration of the TMPO guest probe molecule into HPW particles. Transport of the TMPO absorbate into the matrix of the HPW adsorbent was found to invoke a desorption/absorption process associated with the (TMPO)(2)H(+) adducts. Consequently, three types of protonic acid sites with distinct superacid strengths, which correspond to (31)P chemical shifts of 92.1, 89.4, and 87.7 ppm, were observed for HPW samples loaded with less than three molecules of TMPO per Keggin unit. Together with detailed DFT calculations, these results support the scenario that the TMPOH(+) complexes are associated with protons located at three different terminal oxygen (O(d)) sites of the PW(12)O(40)(3-) polyanions. Upon increasing the TMPO loading to >3.0 molecules per Keggin unit, abrupt decreases in acid strength and the corresponding structural variations were attributed to the change in secondary structure of the pseudoliquid phase of HPW in the presence of excessive guest absorbate.

Adsorption of lysozyme on spherical mesoporous carbons (SMCs) replicated from colloidal silica arrays by chemical vapor deposition.

Spherical mesoporous carbons (SMC) were successfully synthesized by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method using ferrocene as the carbon precursor and colloidal silica arrays as templates. The structure and textural properties of SMCs were characterized by a variety of techniques. Accordingly, a possible formation mechanism was proposed. These SMC materials were found to exhibit extraordinary high adsorption capacities (ca. 100mumol/g) for lysozyme (Lz) in solution with a pH value of 11 close to its isoelectric point. The correlations between the textural parameters of SMCs with Lz adsorption capacity were also investigated along with discussion on its adsorption kinetics and stability.