A free‐standing Pt‐nanowire membrane fabricated via a multistep templating process is used as an electrocatalyst for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). It exhibits remarkably high stability and good catalytic activity due to its unique nanowire‐network structure.

The removal of dye and toxic ionic pollutants from water is an extremely important issue. A simple filtration process to decontaminate water by employing a free‐standing fibrous membrane fabricated from highly uniform carbonaceous nanofibers (CNFs) is demonstrated. This process combines the excellent adsorption behavior of CNFs and the advantages of membrane filtration over conventional adsorption techniques, which include simple scale‐up, reduced time, and lower energy consumption. Batch adsorption experiments showed that the CNFs exhibited larger adsorption capacities than commercial granular active carbon (GAC) and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) because of their large surface area, high uniformity, and numerous active sites on the surface of nanofibers. Membrane filtration experiments proved that the CNF membranes could remove methylene blue (MB) efficiently at a very high flux of 1580 L m−2 h−1, which is 10–100 times higher than that of commercial nano‐ or ultrafiltration membranes with similar rejection properties. The high permeability of CNF membrane permits stacking of membranes to improve adsorption capacity. In addition, the CNF membranes are easily regenerated and remain unaltered in adsorption performance over six successive cycles of dye adsorption, desorption, and washing. Given the high adsorption and regenerability performance of the CNF membrane, it should have potential applications in water purification.

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Translating the unique characteristics of individual nanoscale components into macroscopic materials such as membranes or sheets still remains a challenge, as the engineering of these structures often compromises their intrinsic properties. Here, we demonstrate that the highly active carbonaceous nanofibers (CNFs), which are prepared through a template-directed hydrothermal carbonization process, can be used as a versatile nanoscale scaffold for constructing macroscopic multifunctional membranes. In order to demonstrate the broad applicability of the CNF scaffold, we fabricate a variety of CNF-based composite nanofibers, including CNFs-Fe(3)O(4), CNFs-TiO(2), CNFs-Ag, and CNFs-Au through various chemical routes. Importantly, all of them inherit unique dimensionality (high aspect ratio) and mechanical properties (flexibility) of the original CNF scaffolds and thus can be assembled into macroscopic free-standing membranes through a simple casting process. We also demonstrate the wide application potentials of these multifunctional composite membranes in magnetic actuation, antibiofouling filtration, and continuous-flow catalysis.

Pseudo III-V nitride ZnSnN2 is an earth-abundant semiconductor with a high optical absorption coefficient in the solar spectrum. Its bandgap can be tuned by controlling the cation sublattice disorder. Thus, it is a potential candidate for photovoltaic absorber materials. However, its important basic properties such as the intrinsic bandgap and effective mass have not yet been quantitatively determined. This paper presents a detailed optical absorption analysis of disordered ZnSnN2 degenerately doped with oxygen (ZnSnN2−xOx) in the ultraviolet to infrared region to determine the conduction-band effective mass (m c *) and intrinsic bandgap (E g). ZnSnN2−xOx epilayers are n-type degenerate semiconductors, which exhibit clear free-electron absorption in the infrared region. By analysing the free-electron absorption using the Drude model, m c * was determined to be (0.37 ± 0.05)m 0 (m 0 denotes the free electron mass). The fundamental absorption edge in the visible to ultraviolet region shows a blue shift with increasing electron density. The analysis of the blue shift in the framework of the Burstein-Moss effect gives the E g value of 0.94 ± 0.02 eV. We believe that the findings of this study will provide important information to establish this material as a photovoltaic absorber.

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Currently, the “2019-CoV-2” has been raging across the world for months, causing massive death, huge panic, chaos, and immeasurable economic loss. Such emerging epidemic viruses come again and again over years, leading to similar destructive consequences. Air-borne transmission among humans is the main reason for the rapid spreading of the virus. Blocking the air-borne transmission should be a significant measure to suppress the spreading of the pandemic. Considering the hospital is the most probable place to occur massive cross-infection among patients as emerging virus usually comes in a disguised way, an air distribution optimization of a general three-bed hospital ward in China is carried out in this paper. Using the Eulerian-Lagrangian method, sneeze process from patients who are assumed to be the virus carrier, which is responsible for a common event to trigger cross-infection, is simulated. The trajectory of the released toxic particle and the probability of approaching others in the same ward are calculated. Two evaluation parameter, total maximum time (TMT) and overall particle concentration (OPC) to reflect the particle mobility and probability to cause cross-infection respectively, are developed to evaluate the proposed ten air distributions in this paper. A relatively optimized air distribution proposal with the lowest TMT and OPC is distinguished through a three-stage analysis. Results show that a bottom-in and top-out air distribution proposal is recommended to minimize cross-infections.

Zn3N2 has been reported to have high electron mobility even in polycrystalline films. The high mobility in polycrystalline films is a striking feature as compared with group-III nitrides. However, the origins of the high mobility have not been elucidated to date. In this paper, we discuss the reason for high mobility in Zn3N2. We grew epitaxial and polycrystalline films of Zn3N2. Electron effective mass (m*) was determined optically and found to decrease with a decrease in electron density. Using a nonparabolic conduction band model, the m* at the bottom of the conduction band was derived to be (0.08 ± 0.03)m0 (m0 denotes the free electron mass), which is comparable to that in InN. Optically determined intra-grain mobility (μopt) in the polycrystalline films was higher than 110 cm2 V−1 s−1, resulting from the small m*. The Hall mobility (μH) in the polycrystalline films was significantly smaller than μopt, indicating that electron transport is impeded by scattering at the grain boundaries. Nevertheless, μH higher than 70 cm2 V−1 s−1 was achievable owing to the beneficial effect of the high μopt. As for the epitaxial films, we revealed that electron transport is hardly affected by grain boundary scattering and is governed solely by ionized impurity scattering. The findings in this study suggest that Zn3N2 is a high-mobility semiconductor with small effective mass.