Based on first-principles methods, the authors of this paper investigate spin thermoelectric effects of one-dimensional spin-based devices consisting of zigzag-edged graphene nanoribbons (ZGNRs), carbon chains and graphene nanoflake. It is found that the spin-down transmission function is suppressed to zero, while the spin-up transmission function is about 0.25. Therefore, an ideal half-metallic property is achieved. In addition, the phonon thermal conductance is obviously smaller than the electronic thermal conductance. Meantime, the spin Seebeck effects are obviously enhanced at the low-temperature regime (about 80K), resulting in the fact that spin thermoelectric figure of merit can reach about 40. Moreover, the spin thermoelectric figure of merit is always larger than the corresponding charge thermoelectric figure of merit. Therefore, the study shows that they can be used to prepare the ideal thermospin devices.

Magnetic graphene oxide nanocomposites (M-GO) were successfully synthesized by partial reduction co-precipitation method and used for removal of Sr(II) and Cs(I) ions from aqueous solutions. The structures and properties of the M-GO was investigated by X-ray diffraction, Fourier transformed infrared spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM) and N₂-BET measurements. It is found that M-GO has 2.103 mg/g and 142.070 mg/g adsorption capacities for Sr(II) and Cs(I) ions, respectively. The adsorption isotherm matches well with the Freundlich for Sr(II) and Dubinin–Radushkevich model for Cs(I) and kinetic analysis suggests that the adsorption process is pseudo-second-ordered.

Heat removal has become an increasingly crucial issue for microelectronic chips due to increasingly high speed and high performance. One solution is to increase the thermal conductivity of the corresponding dielectrics. However, traditional approach to adding solid heat conductive nanoparticles to polymer dielectrics led to a significant weight increase. Here we propose a dielectric polymer filled with heat conductive hollow nanoparticles to mitigate the weight gain. Our mesoscale simulation of heat conduction through this dielectric polymer composite microstructure using the phase-field spectral iterative perturbation method demonstrates the simultaneous achievement of enhanced effective thermal conductivity and the low density. It is shown that additional heat conductivity enhancement can be achieved by wrapping the hollow nanoparticles with graphene layers. The underlying mesoscale mechanism of such a microstructure design and the quantitative effect of interfacial thermal resistance will be discussed. This work is expected to stimulate future efforts to develop light-weight thermal conductive polymer nanocomposites.

In this paper, a series of Li₃V₂(PO₄)₃/C composite nanofibers is prepared by a facile and environmentally friendly electrospinning method and calcined under different temperatures. The LVP nanofiber calcined under 900 ℃ exhibits the best electrochemical performance. The bicontinuous morphologies of LVP/CNF are the fibers shrunk and the LVP crystals simultaneously grown. At the range of 3.0–4.3 V, LVP/CNF obtained under 900 ℃ delivers the initial capacity of 135 mAh/g, close to the theoretical capacity of LVP. Even at high current density, the sample of LVP/CNF still presents good electrochemical performance.

Atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) is a kind of controllable reactive radical polymerization method with potential application value. The modification of graphene oxide (GO) by ATRP reaction can effectively control various graft polymer molecules Chain length and graft density, giving GO different functionality, such as good solvent dispersibility, environmental sensitive stimulus responsiveness, biocompatibility, and the like. In this paper, ATRP reaction and GO surface non-covalent bonding ATRP polymer molecular chain were directly initiated from GO surface immobilization initiator. The ATRP reaction modified GO was reviewed, and the process conditions and research methods of ATRP modification reaction were summarized, as well as pointed out the functional characteristics and application prospect of GO functionalized composites.

In this paper, we deal with one of the most urgent and relevant topics nowadays, i.e., water pollution. The problem is finding a valid candidate for the absorption and removal of different kinds of pollutants commonly found in water. There are already some indications about graphene oxide as a potential candidate. In the present work, we take a step forward to show how graphene nanoplatelets (rather than the oxide form of this material) are capable of decontaminating water. In this starting step, we use a specific substance as a model pollutant, i.e., acetonitrile, leaving for the future steps, to extend the analysis to additional types of pollutants. In addition to laboratory-produced graphene nanoplatelets, we already examined in the past; now we wish to consider also commercially available ones, so that the new results will not be bound to a laboratory (low technology readiness level) material, but will become interesting also from the industrial point of view, thanks to the scalability of the nanoplatelets production. For this aim, we compare the performance of two types of filters based on two classes of nanomaterials, i.e., those produced by microwave and ultrasound assisted exfoliation, already analyzed in our earlier works, with those commercially distributed by an Italian company, i.e., NANESA, http://www.nanesa.com/. The latter is an innovative SME involved in the production of graphene-based nanomaterials. We focus here in the graphene nanoplatelets, commercially available in industrial batches (GXNan grades). The present study leads to determine which filtering membrane, among the various types of commercial graphene considered, shows the greatest stability, and the lack of breakage of the membrane, concentrating on such accessory features, given that all types of graphene showed excellent adsorption properties.