Advanced Materials Interfaces最新文献

Metal Cluster-Based Chemical Sensor

The development of a nanohybrid based on trinuclear molybdenum sulfido clusters supported onto graphene and its application to detect toxic and harmful gaseous molecules is described. The outstanding sensing performance toward CO₂ makes these materials promising for a new generation of molybdenum resistive interrogators for the control of air quality. More details can be found in article 2400590 by Juan Casanova-Chafer, Eduard Llobet, and Marta Feliz.

Liquid Crystal Elastomers

In article 2400488, Mohand O. Saed and co-workers develop reusable liquid crystal adhesives with controlled transition temperatures (Tg and Ti). These adhesives show low tackiness in the glassy and isotropic phases, becoming activated between Tg and Ti. They are reusable across multiple heating and cooling cycles, resistant to contamination, and offer lap shear and peel strengths comparable to traditional pressure-sensitive adhesives (PSAs).

Planetary Lithium Islands

The cover image of the article 2400693 by Yi Cui, Stacey F. Bent, and co-workers depicts a unique planetary-like microstructure with lithium islands achieved by resistive hafnia coating on copper. The work introduces an interface engineering approach that allows the decoupling of two critical lithium (Li)-metal battery parameters—Li-morphology and solid electrolyte interphase (SEI)—in their kinetically convoluted regime. The article highlights that Li morphological control is more practical due to the challenges in SEI preservation.

Photoswitchable Wettability

The spiropyran-containing porous surfaces with a certain roughness range demonstrate a photoswitchable wetting properties upon UV exposure due to the ring-opening reaction of spiropyran resulting in a higher dipole moment. Condensate droplets on UV-switched regions coalesce faster, lower number of droplets as well as larger merged droplets form on the surface as the surface is less hydrophobic. More details can be found in article 2400396 by Dorothea Helmer and co-workers.

Mesoporous Metal Oxide Films

In article 2400215, Peter Möller-Buschbaum and co-workers show the systematical development of mesoporous metal oxide films with tailored structures, offering strong potential for high-performance industrial applications such as photovoltaics and photocatalysis. Key factors such as material mass, acid concentration, precursor ratio, and calcination are highlighted to emphasize their impact on film morphology.

Silicon Carbide

The wide bandgap semiconductor material Silicon Carbide (SiC) is an attractive proposition to replace Silicon for the development of advanced novel power electronic devices, such as superjunction devices. Trench refill epitaxy (TFE) has been developed, where semiconductor processing techniques have been used to create microstructures in SiC and refilled with single crystal SiC to fabricate these exotic superjunction structures. More details can be found in article 2400466 by Vishal Shah and co-workers.

Certain metal oxides exhibit unique phases and associated properties that can generally only be accessed via high temperature treatments. However, high temperature processes usually lead to surface reconstruction and pore collapse, which reduces the active surface area. In this study, a novel method for accessing phases is demonstrated at high temperature while maintaining porosity by depositing thin oxide films onto a temperature stable activated carbon template. Subsequent annealing and calcination creates the phase of interest while maintaining the porous structure. Specifically, stoichiometrically limited liquid phase atomic layer deposition is used to deposit 6, 9, 12 and 15 layers of amorphous alumina, which, following high temperature treatment, led to a mixture of α and δ phases with surface areas of 186 and 146 m² g⁻¹ for 6 and 9 layers respectively. Pure α alumina can also be achieved with high surface areas of 76 and 45 m² g⁻¹ for 12 and 15 layers. Importantly, all the samples retained the porosity imparted by the carbon structure, with primarily meso and macro pores. Furthermore, different metal oxides are also deposited onto the activated carbon surface, including ZnO, TiO₂, ZrO₂, and Ga₂O₃ illustrating this templating concept can also be applied to different materials.