Oil/water separation is a worldwide challenge. Learning from nature provides a promising approach for the construction of functional materials with oil/water separation. In this contribution, inspired by superhydrophobic self‐cleaning lotus leaves and porous biomaterials, a facile method is proposed to fabricate polyurethane foam with simultaneous superhydrophobicity and superoleophilicity. Due to its low density, light weight, and superhydrophobicity, the as‐prepared foam can float easily on water. Furthermore, the foam demonstrates super‐repellency towards corrosive liquids, self‐cleaning, and oil/water separation properties, possessing multifunction integration. We expect that this low‐cost process can be readily and widely adopted for the design of multifunctional foams for large‐area oil‐spill cleanup.

A versatile and robust adsorbent with both magnetic property and very high adsorption capacity is presented on the basis of functionalization of iron oxide-silica magnetic particles with carboxylic hyperbranched polyglycerol (Fe(3)O(4)/SiO(2)/HPG-COOH). The structure of the resulting product was confirmed by Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectra, thermo gravimetric analysis (TGA), zeta-potential, and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). According to the TGA results, the density of the carboxylic groups on the surface of Fe(3)O(4)/SiO(2)/HPG-COOH is calculated to be as high as 3.0 mmol/g, posing a powerful base for adsorbing dyes and drugs. Five kinds of dyes and one representative anticancer drug were chosen to investigate the adsorption capacity of the as-prepared magnetic adsorbent. The adsorbent shows highly efficient adsorption performance for all of the adsorbates especially for the cationic dyes and drug. For example, the saturated adsorption capacity of the Fe(3)O(4)/SiO(2)/HPG-COOH for methyl violet (MV) can reach 0.60 mmol/g, which is much higher than the previous magnetic adsorbents (usually lower than 0.30 mmol/g). 95% of MV and 90% of R6G could be adsorbed within 5 min, and both of the adsorptions reached equilibrium in about 15 min. The adsorption kinetics and isotherm of the adsorbents were investigated in detail and found that the kinetic and equilibrium adsorptions are well-modeled using pseudo-second-order kinetics and Langmuir isotherm model, respectively. In addition, the influences of pH and ionic strength on the adsorption capacity were also examined and found that pH has much greater effect on the adsorption capacity compared with the ionic strength. Regeneration experiments showed that the Fe(3)O(4)/SiO(2)/HPG-COOH can be well-regenerated in ethanol and partially regenerated in 1 M HCl aqueous solution. After regeneration, the magnetic adsorbents can still show high adsorption capacity even for 10 cycles of desorption-adsorption. No obvious decreases of magnetic intensity and aggregation of adsorbents can be observed even after 10 cycles of adsorption-desorption.

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The orthogonality of RAFT and ROMP chemistries are exploited for a highly efficient “grafting through” strategy to afford cylindrical molecular brushes. The ROMP of α‐norbornenyl‐functionalized poly(t‐butyl acrylate) macroRAFT chain transfer agents, catalyzed by a modified 2nd generation Grubbs' catalyst, achieved completion in minutes under air. Following hydrolysis, functionalizable water‐soluble poly(acrylic acid) molecular brushes were afforded. [Color figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at www.interscience.wiley.com.]

Highly fluorescent sulfur quantum dots could be rapidly and massively synthesized from inexpensive elemental sulfur under a pure O2 atmosphere.

Self-assembly of synthetic macromolecules, inspired by the organization of biomolecules in nature, is a powerful approach for fabricating novel nanostructures, whose potential applications in nanomedicine are of significant interest. 1,2 Using amphiphilic linear copolymers as building blocks, various supramolecular architectures have been constructed, whose compositions, sizes, and morphologies are all tunable. [3][4][5] In spite of that, those nanostructures, made from synthetic macromolecules, are still primitive compared with those from biomolecules, which exhibit high complexity developed by evolution for millions of years. Our interest to attain nanostructures with higher complexities, approaching those of biological systems, drives our design of more types and sizes of macromolecular and nanoscopic building blocks, extending beyond simple linear block copolymers.Our initial targets are hetero-grafted diblock molecular brushes, 6,7 in which two different types of polymeric side chains are grafted sequentially along a backbone. These structures are designed as nanoscopic molecular frameworks having defined three-dimensional shape and control over the entire compositional profile, to mimic some features of the globular shape and compositional heterogeneities of protein building blocks. Three strategies are often used to synthesize molecular brushes: "grafting from", 8-11 "grafting onto", 12,13 and "grafting through". 14-18 The first two strategies can afford molecular brushes with relatively long and well-defined backbones. In the synthesis of hetero-grafted diblock molecular brushes, [19][20][21][22] for which the block segments of differing compositions are distributed along the primary molecular brush backbone, the "grafting through" strategy has several conveniences and advantages in avoiding many side reactions and providing significant structural control 6 due to the use of presynthesized polymers that are then polymerized to afford the final brush structure. To polymerize the highly diluted chain end groups of the polymers that ultimately become the grafted side chains, ring-opening metathesis polymerization (ROMP) is often applied. 14,15 Herein, by exploiting the orthogonality and livingness of reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization 23 and ROMP, 24-26 we have developed a facile and efficient "grafting through" strategy to synthesize hetero-grafted diblock molecular brushes with precisely controlled architecture. These structures were transformed into amphiphilic diblock molecular brushes, which were then investigated as nanoscopic building blocks for the assembly of supramolecular nanostructures in aqueous medium.The amphiphilic hetero-grafted diblock molecular brush was produced by a highly efficient, one-pot "grafting-through" process, involving the sequential ROMP of norbornenylterminated macromonomers, followed by a deprotection reaction (Scheme 1). R-Norbornenyl poly(tert-butyl acrylate) (NB-PtBA) (1) and R-norbornenyl polystyrene (NB-PS) (2) macromonomers were firs...

A facile, green, low cost and efficient one-step technology to synthesize highly dispersible functional single-walled and multiwalled carbon nanotubes (f-SWNTs and f-MWNTs) up to supergrams is reported. Large-scale (up to hundreds of grams) synthesis of functional azides was developed at first, and various reactive groups (i.e., -OH, -NH 2 , -COOH, and -Br) were then introduced onto the convex surfaces of CNTs in merely one reaction of nitrene addition under a relatively mild condition without causing significant damage to nanotubes. The contents of the functional moieties can be easily controlled by adjusting the feed ratio of the azide compounds to CNTs. In order to demonstrate the reactivity and functions of the immobilized organic moieties, different chemical reactions, including surface-initiated polymerizations, amidation, and reduction of metal ions, were performed on the functional CNTs, affording various CNT-polymer and CNT-Pt nanohybrids. The resulting materials were characterized by various measurements, such as TGA, Raman, XPS, FTIR, NMR, XRD, SEM, TEM, and HRTEM. The presented one-step methodology opens the avenue for industrial production of functional CNTs.

Graphene oxide (GO) is emerging as a potential adsorbent for environmental cleanup due to its attractive attributes associated with high removal efficiency toward water pollutants. However, it is difficult to separate GO from water after adsorption. Until now, the development of an effective approach that can simultaneously take advantage of the adsorption feature of GO and overcome the separation problem is still a challenge. Herein, we demonstrate a simple one-step approach to fabricate magnetic GO/poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) composite gels (mGO/PVA CGs), which not only exhibit convenient magnetic separation capability but also show remarkably enhanced adsorption capacity for cationic methylene blue (MB) and methyl violet (MV) dyes as compared with the one without GO (e.g., the adsorption capacities of mGO/PVA-50% and mGO/PVA-0% for MB are 231.12 and 85.64 mg/g, respectively). Detailed adsorption studies reveal that the adsorption kinetics and isotherms can be well-described by pseudo-second-order model and Langmuir isotherm model, respectively. Moreover, the adsorbent could be well regenerated in an acid solution without obvious compromise of removal efficiency. Considering the facile fabrication process and robust adsorption performance of the mGO/PVA CG, this work opens up enormous opportunities to bring GO from experimental research to practical water treatment applications. In addition, the mGO/PVA CG can act as a magnetic support for in situ growth of noble metal nanocatalyst with excellent catalytic performance, as exemplified by the synthesis of mGO/PVA-Pt catalyst in this paper.