No Arabic abstract
Methylene blue (MB) is often used in textile industries and is actively present in the wastewater runs-off. Recently, mediated electrochemical oxidation (MEO) offers a fast, reliable and promising results for environmental remediation. Thus, we aimed to evaluate the electro-degradation potential of MB by MEO using Ce(IV) ionic mediator. Furthermore, we also observed the influence of addition Ag(I) ion catalyst in MEO for degradation of MB. The electro-degradation of MB was evaluated by cyclic voltammetry technique and was confirmed by UV-Vis spectrophotometry, high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) analysis and back-titration analysis. The results showed that in the absence of Ag(I) ion catalyst, about 89 % of MB was decolorized within 30 minutes. When 2 mM of Ag(I) ion catalyst was applied, the electro-degradation of MB was increased to maximum value of 100%. The UV-Vis spectrum confirmed the electro-degradation of MB as suggested by decreased maximum absorbance value at {lambda} 668 nm from 2.125 to 0.059. The HPLC analysis showed the formation of five new peaks at retention time of 1.331, 1.495, 1.757, 1.908 and 2.017 minutes, confirming the electro-degradation of MB. The back-titration analysis showed about 52.9% of CO2 was produced during electro-degradation of MB by MEO. More importantly, more than 97% of Ce(IV) ionic mediator were recovered in our investigation. Our results reveal the potential of MEO using Ce(IV) ionic mediator to improve the wastewater runs-off quality from textile as well as other industries containing methylene blue.
Polymer composite electrolytes of Nafion and phosphotungstic acid (PWA) are fabricated and analyzed using electrochemical strain microscopy (ESM) and conductive atomic force microscopy (C-AFM) to visualize hydrophilic ion channels near the surface, which are composed of water and sulfonic acid groups. The results indicate that the fibrillar objects in ESM image, without significant changes in topography, are hydrophilic ion channels and additional ion channels formed by interaction between PWA and sulfonic groups in Nafion. In this study, the buried ion channels lying under the surface are probed as well as the inlet and outlet of the channels on the surface through combined use of ESM and C-AFM. The results further enhance the understanding of ionic conduction in composite polymer electrolytes in various fields.
The impact of organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) in modern life is witnessed by their wide employment in full-color, energy-saving, flat panel displays and smart-screens; a bright future is likewise expected in the field of solid state lighting. Cyclometalated iridium complexes are the most used phosphorescent emitters in OLEDs due to their widely tunable photophysical properties and their versatile synthesis. Blue-emitting OLEDs, suffer from intrinsic instability issues hampering their long term stability. Backed by computational studies, in this work we studied the sky-blue emitter FIrpic in both ex-situ and in-situ degradation experiments combining complementary, mutually independent, experiments including chemical metathesis reactions, in liquid phase and solid state, thermal and spectroscopic studies and LC-MS investigations. We developed a straightforward protocol to evaluate the degradation pathways in iridium complexes, finding that FIrpic degrades through the loss of the picolinate ancillary ligand. The resulting iridium fragment was than efficiently trapped in-situ as BPhen derivative 1. This process is found to be well mirrored when a suitably engineered, FIrpic-based, OLED is operated and aged. In this paper we (i) describe how it is possible to effectively study OLED materials with a small set of readily accessible experiments and (ii) evidence the central role of host matrix in trapping experiments.
Ferroelectricity, especially in hafnia-based thin films at nanosizes, has been rejuvenated in the fields of low-power, nonvolatile and Si-compatible modern memory and logic applications. Despite tremendous efforts to explore the formation of the metastable ferroelectric phase and the polarization degradation during field cycling, the ability of oxygen vacancy to exactly engineer and switch polarization remains to be elucidated. Here we report reversibly electrochemical control of ferroelectricity in Hf$_{0.5}$Zr$_{0.5}$O$_2$ (HZO) heterostructures with a mixed ionic-electronic LaSrMnO$_3$ electrode, achieving a hard breakdown field more than 18 MV/cm, over fourfold as high as that of typical HZO. The electrical extraction and insertion of oxygen into HZO is macroscopically characterized and atomically imaged in situ. Utilizing this reversible process, we achieved multiple polarization states and even repeatedly repaired the damaged ferroelectricity by reversed negative electric fields. Our study demonstrates the robust and switchable ferroelectricity in hafnia oxide distinctly associated with oxygen vacancy and opens up opportunities to recover, manipulate, and utilize rich ferroelectric functionalities for advanced ferroelectric functionality to empower the existing Si-based electronics such as multi-bit storage.
The paper presents the results of measurements of XPS valence band spectra of SiO2/MAPbI3 hybrid perovskites subjected to irradiation with visible light and annealing at an exposure of 0-1000 hours. It is found from XPS survey spectra that in both cases (irradiation and annealing) a decrease in the I:Pb ratio is observed with aging time, which unambiguously indicates PbI2 phase separation as a photo and thermal product of degradation. The comparison of the XPS valence band spectra of irradiated and annealed perovskites with density functional theory calculations of the MAPbI3 and PbI2 compounds have shown a systematic decrease in the contribution of I 5p-states and allowed us to determine the threshold for degradation, which is 500 hours for light irradiation and 200 hours for annealing.
Increasing energy demands of modern society requires deep understanding of the properties of energy storage materials as well as their performance tuning. We show that the capacitance of graphene oxide (GO) can be precisely tuned using a simple electrochemical reduction route. In situ resistance measurements, combined with cyclic voltammetry measurement and Raman spectroscopy, have shown that upon the reduction GO is irreversibly deoxygenated which is further accompanied with structural ordering and increasing of electrical conductivity. The capacitance is maximized when the concentration of oxygen functional groups is properly balanced with the conductivity. Any further reduction and de-oxygenation leads to the gradual loss of the capacitance. The observed trend is independent on the preparation route and on the exact chemical and structural properties of GO. It is proposed that an improvement of capacitive properties of any GO can be achieved by optimization of its reduction conditions.