Our environment has been significantly impacted by man-made pollutants, primarily due to industries making substantial use of synthetic chemicals, resulting in significant environmental consequences. In this research investigation, the co-precipitation approach was employed for the synthesis of cellulose-based ferric oxide (Fe₂O₃/cellulose) and copper oxide nanoparticles (CuO_x-NPs). Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analyses were conducted to determine the properties of the newly synthesised nanoparticles. Furthermore, the synthesized nanoparticles were employed for eliminating chromium from aqueous media under various conditions, including temperature, contact time, adsorbent concentration, adsorbate concentration, and pH. Additionally, the synthesised materials were used to recover Cr(VI) ions from real samples, including tap water, seawater, and industrial water, and the adsorptive capacity of both materials was evaluated under optimal conditions. The synthesis of Fe₂O₃/cellulose and CuO_x-NPs proved to be effective, as indicated by the outcomes of the study. 

Due to rising global environmental challenges, air/water pollution treatment technologies, especially membrane techniques, have been focused on. In this context, air or purification membranes have been considered effective for environmental remediation. In the field of polymeric membranes, high-performance polymer/graphene nanocomposite membranes have gained increasing research attention. The polymer/graphene nanomaterials exposed several potential benefits when processed as membranes. This review explains the utilization of polymer and graphene-derived nanocomposites towards membrane formation and water or gas separation or decontamination properties. Here, different membrane designs have been developed depending upon the polymer types (poly(vinyl alcohol), poly(vinyl chloride), poly(dimethyl siloxane), polysulfone, poly(methyl methacrylate), etc.) and graphene functionalities. Including graphene in polymers influences membrane microstructure, physical features, molecular permeability or selectivity, and separations. Polysulfone/graphene oxide nanocomposite membranes have been found to be most efficient with an enhanced rejection rate of 90%–95%, a high water flux >180 L/m²/h, and a desirable water contact angle for water purification purposes. For gas separation membranes, efficient membranes have been reported as polysulfone/graphene oxide and poly(dimethyl siloxane)/graphene oxide nanocomposites. In these membranes, N₂, CO₂, and other gases permeability has been found to be higher than even >99.9%. Similarly, higher selectivity values for gases like CO₂/CH₄ have been observed. Thus, high-performance graphene-based nanocomposite membranes possess high potential to overcome the challenges related to water or gas molecular separations.

Lead sulfide (PbS) is an important IV-VI semiconductor material with narrow bandwidth and wide wave width, which attracts people's attention. Nano-level PbS has many novel optoelectronic properties and has a wide range of applications in the field of optoelectronics, such as infrared optoelectronic devices, photovoltaic devices, light-emitting devices and display devices. In this paper, Pbs is produced by solvent thermal method by using lead acetate as lead source, sulfur power as sulfur source, ethylene glycol as solvent, and acetic acid to provide acidic environment. The reaction acidity, type of lead source, amount of sulfur source and other aspects will be explored. The products obtained under different conditions were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), optical microscopy and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The results showed that PbS produced at 140°C for 24 hours, using 14mL ethylene glycol and 1.2mL acetic acid has the best morphology. It has a non-planar six-arm symmetrical structure. Finally, we prepare the lead sulfide composite Ni/PbS, and characterized it.

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.