Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are currently incorporated into various consumer products, and numerous new applications and products containing CNTs are expected in the future. The potential for negative effects caused by CNT release into the environment is a prominent concern and numerous research projects have investigated possible environmental release pathways, fate, and toxicity. However, this expanding body of literature has not yet been systematically reviewed. Our objective is to critically review this literature to identify emerging trends as well as persistent knowledge gaps on these topics. Specifically, we examine the release of CNTs from polymeric products, removal in wastewater treatment systems, transport through surface and subsurface media, aggregation behaviors, interactions with soil and sediment particles, potential transformations and degradation, and their potential ecotoxicity in soil, sediment, and aquatic ecosystems. One major limitation in the current literature is quantifying CNT masses in relevant media (polymers, tissues, soils, and sediments). Important new directions include developing mechanistic models for CNT release from composites and understanding CNT transport in more complex and environmentally realistic systems such as heteroaggregation with natural colloids and transport of nanoparticles in a range of soils.

Polymer coatings often contain degradation-susceptible regions, and corrosion of the metallic substrate can occur directly underneath these regions. In this paper, the microstructure of model coating materials is investigated using atomic force microscopy (AFM). Specifically, AFM is used to study heterogeneity in thin film blends of polystyrene (PS) and polybutadiene (PB) as a function of annealing time at 80 °C. PS/PB blend films with thicknesses of approximately 250 nm are prepared by spin casting from solutions onto silicon substrates. Both topographic and phase imaging in tapping mode AFM are performed on these films under ambient conditions and at different force levels using a silicon tip. For certain force levels, phase imaging provides good contrast between the phase-separated PS and PB regions, primarily because of the large compliance difference between the two materials. This contrast decreases with increasing annealing time because thermal oxidation causes cross-linking in PB, and thus, the compliance of the PB region increases toward that of PS. Nanoscale indentation measurements are then made on the observed phase-separated regions to identify these regions as PS-and PB-rich and to better understand the influence of relative surface stiffness on the phase images. Cast and free-standing films of pure PS and pure PB are also studied as a function of annealing time using AFM, contact angle measurements, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), and dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA). Results from studies of the individual PS and PB films are related to the AFM results for the blend films. The use of phase imaging for cure monitoring of polymers and for studies of chemically heterogeneous polymer systems is also discussed.

A simple electrochemical and self-assembly method was adopted for the fabrication of superhydrophobic spongelike nanostructured TiO2 surfaces with markedly controllable adhesion. Water adhesion ranging from ultralow (5.0 μN) to very high (76.6 μN) can be tuned through adjusting the nitro cellulose dosage concentrations. The detailed experiments and analyses have indicated that the significant increase of adhesion by introducing nitrocellulose is ascribed to the combination of hydrogen bonding between the nitro groups and the hydroxyl groups at the solid/liquid interfaces and the disruption of the densely packed hydrophobic 1H,1H,2H,2H-perfluorooctyltriethoxysilane (PTES) molecule. A mechanism has been proposed to explain the formation of superhydrophobic TiO2 films with distinct adhesion.