Highly crystalline TiO2 nanostructures were prepared through a facile inorganic acid-assisted hydrothermal treatment of hexagonal-structured assemblies of nanocrystalline titiania templated by cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (Hex-ncTiO2/CTAB Nanoskeleton) as starting materials. All samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The influence of hydrochloric acid concentration on the morphology, crystalline and the formation of the nanostructures were investigated. We found that the morphology and crystalline phase strongly depended on the hydrochloric acid concentrations. More importantly, crystalline phase was closely related to the morphology of TiO2 nanostructure. Nanoparticles were polycrystalline anatase phase, and aligned nanorods were single crystalline rutile phase. Possible formation mechanisms of TiO2 nanostructures with various crystalline phases and morphologies were proposed.

This work reports the creation of superhydrophobic wrinkled surfaces with hierarchical structures at both the nanoscale and microscale. A nanoscale structure with 500 nm line gratings was first fabricated on poly(hydroxyethyl methacrylate) films by nanoimprint lithography while a secondary micro-scale structure was created by spontaneous wrinkling. Compared with random wrinkles whose patterns show no specific orientation, the hierarchical wrinkles exhibit interesting orientation due to confinement effects of pre-imprinted line patterns. The hierarchically wrinkled surfaces have significantly higher water contact angles than random wrinkled surfaces, exhibiting superhydrophobicity with water contact angles higher than 160° and water sliding angle lower than 5°. The hierarchically structured wrinkled surfaces exhibit tunable wettability from hydrophobic to superhydrophobic and there is an observed transition from anisotropic to isotropic wetting behavior achievable by adjusting the initial film thickness.

Mn-doped ZnO was synthesized using a co-precipitation technique. X-ray diffraction (XRD) measurements and photoluminescence (PL) spectra show that Mn ions are doped into the lattice positions of ZnO. The modes at 202, 330, and 437 cm-1 in the Raman spectrum are assigned as 2E2 (low), E2 (high)-E2 (low), and E2 (high) modes of ZnO base, respectively. The mode at 528 cm-1 is ascribed to a local vibrational mode related to Mn. The mode at 580 cm-1 should be an intrinsic mode of ZnO and assigned to E1 longitudinal optical (LO). Its reinforcement should result from a combination of resonance at the excitation wavelength and impurity-induced scattering.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Three-dimensional hierarchical ZnO films with lotus-leaf-like micro/nano structures were successfully fabricated via a biomimetic route combining sol-gel technique, soft lithography and hydrothermal treatments. PDMS mold replicated from a fresh lotus leaf was used to imprint microscale pillar structures directly into a ZnO sol film. Hierarchical ZnO micro/nano structures were subsequently fabricated by a 10 low-temperature hydrothermal growth of secondary ZnO nanorod arrays on the micro-structured ZnO film. The morphology and size of ZnO hierarchical micro/nano structures can be easily controlled by adjusting the hydrothermal reaction time. Wettability of hierarchical ZnO thin films was found to convert from superhydrophilicity to hydrophobicity after a low-surface-energy fluoroalkylsilane modification. Improved wetting properties from hydrophobic to superhydrophobic can be tuned by increasing the 15 growth of ZnO nanorods structures. 85 Notes and references