We report on the preparation and characterization of CeO(2) nanofibers (CeO(2)-NFs) and nanocubes (CeO(2)-NCs), as well as Sm- and Gd-doped CeO(2) nanocubes (Sm-CeO(2)-NCs and Gd-CeO(2)-NCs), synthesized by a simple hydrothermal process for CO catalytic oxidation. The samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Raman spectroscopy, and photoluminescence spectroscopy. Their oxygen-storing capacity (OSC) was examined by means of hydrogen temperature-programmed reduction (H(2)-TPR) and oxygen pulse techniques. Their catalytic properties for CO catalytic oxidation were comparatively investigated. The results showed that the CeO(2)-NFs possessed a higher catalytic activity compared to the CeO(2)-NCs because of their smaller size and the greater number of oxygen vacancies. The activity of the Sm-CeO(2)-NCs was higher than that of the CeO(2)-NCs due to an increase in the number of oxygen vacancies, which results from the substitution of Ce(4+) species with Sm(3+) ions. In contrast, Gd doping had a negative effect on the CO catalytic oxidation due to the special electron configuration of Gd(3+)(4f(7)). Our work demonstrates that the oxygen vacancies in pure CeO(2) and the electron configuration of the dopants in doped CeO(2) play an important role in CO oxidation.

At the room temperature, a novel and environmental friendly approach for synthesizing polyaniline (PANI) nanofibers on a large scale is presented firstly in the aqueous phase by ultraviolet (UV)-assisted polymerization using cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) as the "soft-template." It is obvious that the polymerization process can be accelerated under the illumination of UV light and the preliminary mechanism has been pointed out. Furthermore, it also can be noted that the lower concentrations of CTAB and HCl are helpful for the fabrication of smooth and uniform PANI nanofibers. As observed with FE-SEM and TEM, the as-synthesized PANI nanostructures under the appropriate conditions are composed of uniform nanofibers with the average diameter of about 100 nm and the length of several micrometers. Subsequently, the synthesized PANI nanostructures are characterized with UV-vis, FT-IR, XRD spectra, and the typical physical and chemical properties of PANI are displayed. In addition, the conductivity of the synthesized PANI nanofibers was also measured with the four probe method and the excellent conductivity was presented. In summary, the procedure presented here only involving exposure of an acidic aqueous solution of aniline to UV light illumination is so simple and the needed equipment is so low cost, from the viewpoint of technological applications, that the large-scale UV-assisted polymerization of PANI nanofibers from the monomer solution is feasible and promising.

In this paper, the chiral separation of cefadroxil was studied by capillary electrochromatography. Monolithic capillary column was prepared for the separation of cefadroxil enantiomers. The optimum buffer contained 28.5mmol/L sodium acetate, 0.95%(v/v) acetic acid, 19mmol/L beta-cyclodextrin (beta-CD) and 5%(v/v) isopropanol in formamide solution (pH 7.0), with the running voltage of 12kV, the UV detector wavelength of 254nm, the sample injected time of 8s and the temperature of 25 degrees C. Under these conditions, the column efficiency of cefadroxil enantiomers were N(1)=5324 and N(2)=23,768 with a selectivity factor (alpha) of 1.056 and resolution (R(s)) of 0.978. The effect of buffer pH value, beta-CD concentration, organic modifier (isopropanol) concentration and voltage was also investigated for the separation by CEC.

In the present work, nanostructured NiO thin films were prepared from a facile method based on electrophoretic deposition (EPD) using NiOOH sols as the starting material. The scanning electron microscope (SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) observations revealed that the films were comprised of 40-80 nm particles with a thickness of about 100 nm. When using the obtained NiO film as formaldehyde gas sensor, it was found that such kind of nanostructured films have contributed and modified remarkably the sensing properties such as shorter response and recovery time (approximately 10 s and 5 s), higher sensitivity (approximately 3/10 ppm) at lower working temperature (approximately 300 degrees C).

The removal of dissolvable inorganic phosphate (H(2)PO(4)(-)) by sorbents prepared from hydrated lime (HL) and blast furnace slag (BFS) was fundamentally studied by an orthogonal experiment design. Based on statistic analysis, it is revealed that the weight ratio of BFS/HL is the most significant variable, and an optimized preparation condition is figured out. With the increase of HL content, the adsorption capacity increases, suggesting that the HL plays the important role in the removal process in the gross. However, in the lower HL content, it is interesting that the adsorption capacity of as-prepared sorbents exceed the sum of the capacities of the same ratio of BFS and HL. The further analysis indicate the excess capacities linearly depend on the specific surface area of sorbents, suggesting that the removal of H(2)PO(4)(-) is closely related with the microstructure of sorbents in the lower HL content, according to the characterization with SEM, XRD and pore analysis. Additionally, an adsorption model and kinetic are discussed in this paper.