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Porous PtPd alloy nanotubes with Pt contents down to 5 at% are powerful, Pt-lean electrocatalysts.

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Nanocomposites are known for their unique properties with many potential applications. In the present work, porous anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) thin films were processed on glass substrates and subsequently photo-grafted with a zwitterionic anti-biofouling polymer. This allows to fabricate scratch-resistant, transparent anti-biofouling films. The microstructure and how it is affected by nanomechanical testing are investigated by scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy. It is shown that the polymer forms a thin layer on the pore walls and in deionized water, the pore diameter changes due to swelling of the polymer. The nanomechanical and scratch resistance properties are studied using a nanoindenter testing system. The experimental results are validated via numerical calculations. The values of the elastic modulus and hardness are shown to be in good agreement with the numerical ones, and under dry conditions, higher values were obtained in comparison to wet films. There is also a large agreement between modeling and microscopic deformation behavior of the films. Finally, the critical loads in dry and wet conditions for the non-coated AAO samples are approximately the same, while for the coated samples, the critical load is reached rapidly in wet condition in comparison to the dry one.

TiN nanostructures have been shown to exhibit promising plasmonic properties and are potential candidates for various applications, including energy harvesting. However, these properties also show a strong dependence on the processing conditions which have been reported to affect metallicity of TiN. Herein, we report on layered TiN@Au-nanorods (NRs) nanostructures consisting of 20 nm TiN thin layer that is magnetron sputtered on Au-NRs of variable length, yielding different TiN/Au thickness ratios (R). While a 20 nm TiN layer sputtered on the same substrate on which the Au-NRs are grown shows a weak absorption peak in the near IR region, an intense and broad plasmonic peak that lies red from the transverse plasmonic peak of monolithic Au-NRs layer is observed for TiN@Au-NRs. The red-shift is shown to increase with increasing R, attaining 100 nm for R = 1, together with an intense tail in the IR region. These results are interpreted in terms of a strong coupling between TiN and Au that drastically affects the plasmonic behavior of the structure. The results are contrasted with those on Pd@Au-NRs where only a slight blue-shift of few nanometers from the Au peak is observed. Potential applications of the TiN@Au-NRs are mainly in energy harvesting such as water splitting and photocatalysis using electromagnetic radiation in a broad wavelength range, as well as medical applications. Pd@Au-NRs may be used as electrocatalysts with plasmonic enhancement, e.g., for the hydrogen evolution reaction.

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