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Metal sulfides such as MoS 2 can serve as co-catalysts to greatly promote the overall efficiency of Fe 2+ -catalyzed advanced oxidation processes (AOPs). Unsaturated S atoms on the surface of metal sulfides can capture protons from the solution to form H 2 S and at the same time expose reductive metallic active sites to greatly accelerate the rate-limiting step of Fe 3+ /Fe 2+ conversion. The significantly enhanced efficiency of H 2 O 2 decomposition makes the AOPs viable for practical applications in the remediation of organic pollutants.

This study reports a simple and economic method to modify Degussa P25 with a vacuum activated procedure, resulting in its high photo-activity and photosensitivity, which suggests this method to be a starting point for the extension of its application to photocatalysis.

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Boron doped graphene nanosheets (B-GR) as a p-type semiconductor, provides much more edges to facilitate the loading of TiO2 nanoparticles (P25). Highly-dispersed P25/B-GR nanosheets with the size of 20-50 nm, are successfully synthesized by the vacuum activation and ultraphonic method. The nanosized morphology can decrease the local density of defects which are induced by the boron substitutional doping, and make the B-GR keeping excellent conductivity and p-type transport property. Ti-O-C bonds are formed during the mixing process, which could efficiently transfer the electrons from TiO2 to B-GR and the holes from B-GR to TiO2. The tunable bandgap of B-GR determines the large potential application of P25/B-GR in the photoreduction of CO2 and other gaseous organic pollutants.

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A novel thermoresponsive copolymer poly­(N-vinylcaprolactam) grafted cellulose nanocrystals (PVCL-g-CNCs) was synthesized using surface-initiated atom transfer radical polymerization, and its temperature responsive behavior was studied in this work. The chemical structure characterization by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, solid-state CP/MAS 13C NMR spectroscopy, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy confirmed the presence of covalently grafting PVCL chains on the CNC surface. The crystalline structure and nanorod-shaped morphology of CNCs were well preserved after polymerization. Transmission electron microscope results indicated that the surface of CNCs was covered with grafted PVCL brushes. The viscoelastic properties of PVCL-g-CNC aqueous suspensions (1.0 wt %) by dynamic rheology measurements confirmed the thermally induced phase transition behavior. The work presented herein paves the way to design CNC-based advanced functional materials benefiting both from the intrinsic characteristics of CNCs and the new properties imparted by the temperature sensitive grafted polymer chains.

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