Rapid population growth and ever-increasing energy consumption have resulted in increased environmental pollution and energy demands in recent years. Accordingly, studies and research on innovative and efficient ways of wastewater clean-up and exploiting eco-friendly and renewable energy sources such as sunlight have become a necessity. This review focuses on recent progress with photocatalysis for water splitting capabilities. It introduces photocatalysis and hydrogen as a fuel source, before moving on to explain water splitting. Then, the criteria for ideal photocatalytic materials are discussed along with current material systems and their limitations. Finally, it concludes on the TiO2 systems and their potential in future photocatalysis research.
Wearable electronic textiles (smart textiles) combine regular clothing with materials comprising smart sensing capabilities. As such, smart textiles have been increasingly researched across multidisciplinary fields this past decade. Applications for smart fabrics include clothing that assimilate information technologies, communication, magnetic shielding, and sensors for military and healthcare monitoring. Current smart fabrics are generally bulky, heavy weight, and uncomfortable to wear due to the use of metals for sensing and electrical connections. However, electrospinning potentially offers a new way to use polymers instead of metals to create smart textiles that are much more comfortable for the user. The purpose of this study is to obtain a three-dimensional “fluffy mass” from a smart polymeric solution via electrospinning. The mass should behave similarly to a cotton ball that then could be processed through general weaving procedures to form a yarn. The yarn could then be woven into clothing. An electrospinning collector was fabricated from extrapolated dimensions from previous literature in a half-scaled model using aluminum. Along with the collector, a variable speed, low RPM motor was constructed using commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) parts. A high throughput setup, involving one extruder and an grounded rotating collector in a vertical configuration, generated unidirectional oriented Polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) fibers in a hollow casing. This same assembly has the potential to be scaled to produce smart fabrics in large quantities in short periods of time. With further experimentation such as adjustments to the motor speed and/or modifications to the collector design this study could generate an improved procedure to obtain smart materials needed for more comfortable and practical wearable electronics.
This perspective involves two types of functional nanomaterials, amyloid fibrils and metal oxide nanowires and nanogrids. Both the protein and the inorganic nanomaterials rely on their polymorphism to exhibit diverse properties that are important to sensing and catalysis. Several examples of novel functionalities are provided from biomarker sensing and filtration applications to smart scaffolds for energy and sustainability applications.
Polyaniline is a conducting polymer in which both redox and protonating/deprotonating conduction mechanisms are activated in the presence of gaseous compounds, making it a gas sensor. Resistive chemosensors based on PANI, in particular, have been well studied for their gas sensing properties and are considered important sensing materials for a wide range of applications as they operate at room temperature. There is, however, a novel class of polyaniline hybrids with cellulose acetate that may be suitable for detecting biomarkers emitted from the skin and in measuring the pH of breath condensate for diseases and thus, worth studying them further. This work is our perspective on the need of hybrid PANI-CA materials for use in detecting biomarkers emitted from the skin and in measuring the pH of breath condensate for diseases.
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