Zinc oxide (ZnO) has been widely used as a photocatalyst for solar energy conversion and treatment of organic pollutants because of its low toxicity and high photocatalytic efficiency. However, the applicability of ZnO in visible light is limited because of the wide band gap of the material, which results in low efficiency during solar photoconversion. In this paper, we report the facile one-pot, morphology-controlled, and large-scale synthesis of carbon-doped ZnO through urea-assisted thermal decomposition of zinc acetate. Nanorods and nanospheres of carbon-doped ZnO were successfully prepared by using this one-step method with various weight percent of urea. The photocatalytic activities of nanocrystals obtained with different morphologies and carbon contents were evaluated through degradation of methylene blue with visible light irradiation. Results showed that incorporation of carbon decreases the energy band gap of ZnO, improves the separation efficiency of its electron-hole pairs, and significantly enhances the visible light photocatalytic activity.

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Collecting highly diluted target analytes into specific hot spot regions is vital for ultrasensitive surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) applications. In this work, a hydrophobic slippery platform was employed as a concentrator to construct colloidal SERS-active substrates regardless of the diffusion limits during droplet evaporation. Within only 140 s, sufficient absorption between the analytes and colloidal Au nanoparticles (Au NPs) was observed by fluorescence imaging. This effect resulted in excellent SERS sensitivity and stability. Compared with the common metal colloid-based SERS substrates, e.g., drying on a silicon wafer or detection in colloidal solutions, this preconcentrated method showed lower detection limits and the lowest detection concentration of crystal violet molecule down to 10–12 M with a portable Raman spectrometer. Such high signal enhancement was mainly ascribed to the condensation effect of Au colloids/analytes on the hydrophobic slippery substrate, by which almost all probe molecules were guided into the “hot spot” regions of aggregated Au NPs. Using the SERS platform, various illegal additives in realistic food and health-care products, for example, malachite green (1 ppb) added in fish and morphine (0.1 ppm) added in a chafing dish, could be sensitively detected. Therefore, our protocol is a general SERS platform that may provide a simple, fast, and cost-effective approach for trace molecular sensing.

Large-scale uniform MoTe2 crystals with a wide range of photo-response from 532 nm to 1550 nm are controllably grown by a molecular sieve-assisted method.

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Electroplated hard chrome coating is widely used as a wear resistant coating to prolong the life of mechanical components. However, the electroplating process generates hexavalent chromium ion which is known carcinogen. Hence, there is a major effort throughout the electroplating industry to replace hard chrome coating. Composite coating has been identified as suitable materials for replacement of hard chrome coating, while deposition coating prepared using traditional co-deposition techniques have relatively low particles content, but the content of particles incorporated into a coating may fundamentally affect its properties. In the present work, Ni-W/diamond composite coatings were prepared by sediment co-electrodeposition from Ni-W plating bath, containing suspended diamond particles. This study indicates that higher diamond contents could be successfully co-deposited and uniformly distributed in the Ni-W alloy matrix. The maximum hardness of Ni-W/diamond composite coatings is found to be 2249 ± 23 Hv due to the highest diamond content of 64 wt.%. The hardness could be further enhanced up to 2647 ± 25 Hv with heat treatment at 873 K for 1 h in Ar gas, which is comparable to hard chrome coatings. Moreover, the addition of diamond particles could significantly enhance the wear resistance of the coatings.

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In this study, we demonstrated a flexible transparent three-dimensional (3D) ordered micro-hemisphere (MHS) array PDMS film with self-assembled Au nanoparticles (NPs) (an Au NP-MHS array film) as a surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) platform for the in situ detection of pesticides in food.