Functionalized nanostructures for enhanced photocatalytic performance under solar light

• Liejin Guo,
• Dengwei Jing,
• Maochang Liu,
• Yubin Chen,
• Shaohua Shen,
• Jinwen Shi and
• Kai Zhang

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2014, 5, 994–1004, doi:10.3762/bjnano.5.113

• band structure of the solid solution was similarly affected. Mesoporous zirconium–titanium mixed phosphates (ZTP) is also a photocatalyst of interest as they not only show both cation- and anion-exchange capacity, but also can split pure water for hydrogen production under UV light irradiation [59

Confinement dependence of electro-catalysts for hydrogen evolution from water splitting

• Mikaela Lindgren and
• Itai Panas

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2014, 5, 195–201, doi:10.3762/bjnano.5.21

• assembly for the cathode process during water splitting. A computational model was designed to determine how alloying elements control the fraction of H2 released during zirconium oxidation by water relative to the amount of hydrogen picked up by the corroding alloy. This model is utilized to determine the

• descriptor for the electro-catalytic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). It offers a complementary perspective on a recent study addressing the oxidation of zirconium alloys by water [4][5]. The overall reaction is taken to occur by water utilizing hydrolysis to penetrate the oxide scale along hydroxylated

• grain boundaries, see Figure 1a, These hydroxide ions subsequently react with transition metal decorated sites (see Figure 1a) and zirconium metal to produce ZrO2 in conjunction with transient transition metal associated hydride-proton (hydroxide) pairs (see Figure 1b) to restore the ZrO2 grain boundary

Novel composite Zr/PBI-O-PhT membranes for HT-PEFC applications

• Mikhail S. Kondratenko,
• Igor I. Ponomarev,
• Marat O. Gallyamov,
• Dmitry Y. Razorenov,
• Yulia A. Volkova,
• Elena P. Kharitonova and
• Alexei R. Khokhlov

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2013, 4, 481–492, doi:10.3762/bjnano.4.57

• amounts of added Zr were prepared. It was shown in a model reaction between zirconium acetylacetonate (Zr(acac)4) and benzimidazole (BI) that Zr-atoms are capable to form chemical bonds with BI. Thus, Zr may be used as a crosslinking agent for PBI membranes. The obtained Zr/PBI-O-PhT composite membranes

• reduced conductivity due to an excessively high degree of crosslinking. Keywords: composite; high temperature polymer-electrolyte fuel cells (HT-PEFC); impedance spectroscopy; polybenzimidazole (PBI); zirconium; Introduction Polymer-electrolyte fuel cells (PEFC) based on polybenzimidazole (PBI

• compounds (zirconium pyrophosphate [15], zirconium tricarboxybutylphosphonate [16][17]) were introduced into PBI membranes. According to the literature, researchers generally use quite high amounts (10–50%) of modifying agents when producing composite membranes. Such high amounts are required to achieve an

Zirconium nanoparticles prepared by the reduction of zirconium oxide using the RAPET method

• Michal Eshed,
• Swati Pol,
• Aharon Gedanken and
• Mahalingam Balasubramanian

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2011, 2, 198–203, doi:10.3762/bjnano.2.23

• elemental analysis. The XRD pattern reveals that the product is composed of pure metallic zirconium, without any traces of the MgO by-product. Keywords: Let-Lok®; nanoparticles; RAPET; reduction; zirconium; Introduction Zirconium is a strong transition metal that resembles titanium. Because of its strong

• mainly from the mineral zircon, which can be purified with chlorine [2]. Zirconium metal is also used for making zirconium inorganic and organic compounds. Many examples of the synthesis of zirconium complexes for catalytic applications are described in the literature [3][4]. A very important example for

• the application of metallic Zr is the use of Zr nanoparticles (NP) as catalysts for growing TWCNTs (two or three graphene layer tubing) [5]. The presence of the zirconium as a catalyst ensures an effective method for the synthesis of high purity and good quality CNTs. The best known process for the