Fabrication of nanostructured metal nitrides with tailored composition and morphology.

Unprecedented multi-channel TiN micro/nanotubes as well as various metal nitride nanofibers, including TiN, VN, NbN and ternary metal nitride nanofibers, were fabricated by a template free electrospinning method combined with post-nitridation.

Hydrophilic TiO2 porous spheres anchored on hydrophobic polypropylene membrane for wettability induced high photodegrading activities.

TiO(2) porous nanospheres on polypropylene (PP) films (TiO(2)/PP composite) are produced at ambient temperature. Particle/pore size match up is the key anchoring point to overcome the low affinity between hydrophilic materials and hydrophobic materials. With the hydrophilic TiO(2) catalyst evenly dispersed on a hydrophobic surface, the aqueous solution will selectively skip the substrate and wet the catalysts. Such a wettability-induced smart system maximizes the degrading activity of the TiO(2) catalyst. In photodegrading reactions, the resulting TiO(2)/PP composite film exhibits a 10 times higher activity in flow-type setup than the same TiO(2) catalyst in a traditional batch-type setup.