Sharif Digital Repository

BiVO4/Graphene/TiO2 as a novel nanocomposite photoanode was designed, synthesized and characterized for photoelectrochemical application. BiVO4/Graphene nanocomposite was initially synthesized by photocatalytic process and then, BiVO4/Graphene/TiO2 nanocomposite thin film was prepared by deposition of the BiVO4/Graphene solution onto the surface of sol-gel derived TiO2 thin film. Morphology, crystal structure, surface chemical composition and optical properties of the synthesized BiVO4/Graphene/TiO2 nanocomposite thin film were characterized and compared with the BiVO4/Graphene and pure TiO2 samples. Observations of scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images revealed that the surface of the... 

Purpose: The prime end of this study was to design a novel pH-sensitive as well as a PEGylated dendritic nanocarrier for both controllable and traceable gemcitabine delivery to cancerous cells. To accomplish this goal, we took advantage of a hybrid of nanoparticles including: mesoporous silica, graphene oxide and magnetite. Methods: The nanocarrier was prepared in a multi-step synthesis route. First, magnetite mesoporous silica was deposited on the graphene oxide matrix. Then, polyamidoamine dendrimers (up to generation 1.5) with pentaethylene hexamine end groups were grafted on the surface of the nanoparticles. In order to enhance the biostability, and as the next step, the nanocarrier was... 

A hierarchical core-shell structure composed of ZnO nanotubes/MnO2 nanosheets was fabricated via a two-step electrochemical deposition procedure on the surface of a 3D graphene network (3DGN) as a free-standing monolithic electrode. In the first step, ZnO nanorod arrays were grown on the surface of a 3DGN followed by electrochemical deposition of MnO2 nanosheets in the next step, which caused the inner parts of initial ZnO nanorods to etch away and resulted in the formation of ZnO nanotubes (ZnO NTs). The highly porous interconnected graphene backbone offers very high conductivity and a large accessible surface area. On the other hand, the formation of ZnO nanotubes can enhance the... 

Energy and environment crises motivated scientists to develop sustainable, renewable, and clean energy resources mainly based on solar hydrogen. For this purpose, one main challenge is the low cost flexible substrates for designing earth abundant efficient cocatalysts to reduce required water oxidation overpotential. Here, a systematic morphological and electrochemical study has been reported for cobalt oxide/hydroxide nanoflakes simply electrodeposited on four different commercially available substrates, titanium, copper sheet, steel mesh, and nickel foam. Remarkable dependence between the used substrate, morphology, and electrocatalytic properties of nanoflakes introduced flexible porous... 

Graphene-based materials are revealing the leading edge of advanced technology for their exceptional physical and chemical properties. Chemical manipulation on graphene surface to tailor its unique properties and modify atomic structures is being actively pursued. Therefore, the discovery of robust and general protocols to anchor active functionality on graphene basal plane is still of great interest. Multicomponent reactions promise an enormous level of interest due to addressing both diversity and complexity in combinatorial synthesis, in which more than two starting compounds react to form a product derived from entire inputs. In this article, we present the first covalent... 

Graphene oxide platelets synthesized by using a chemical exfoliation method were deposited on anatase TiO2 thin films. Postannealing of the graphene oxide/TiO2 thin films at 400 °C in air resulted in partial formation of a Ti-C bond between the platelets and their beneath thin film. By using atomic force microscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analyses, UV-visible light-induced photocatalytic reduction of the graphene oxide platelets of the annealed graphene oxide/TiO2. thin films immersed in ethanol was studied for the different irradiation times. After 4 h of photocatalytic reduction, the vertical space between the platelets decreased from about 1.1 to less than 0.8 nm and the... 

Hydrogen storage/evolution behavior of nafion/NaCl/graphene quantum dot (GQD) mixed matrix as selective hydrogen capacitor (power source) was evaluated in detail through an electrochemical process at two independent potential ranges. For this purpose, a three-electrode system included Pt disk as counter electrode, Ag/AgCl as reference electrode and GQD-based mixed matrix-modified Pt disk as working electrode. For hydrogen storage, the deposition potential and time were evaluated to −1.0 V (vs. Ag/AgCl) and 120 s, respectively under high basic solution generated using NaOH (1.0 M) solution, followed by evolution of hydrogen at +0.8 V (vs. Ag/AgCl) during formation of hydrogen bubbles. The... 

Carbon nanoscroll (CNS) is a graphene sheet rolled into a spiral structure with great potential for different applications in nanotechnology. In this paper, an equivalent open shell model is presented to study the vibration behavior of a CNS with arbitrary boundary conditions. The equivalent parameters used for modeling the carbon nanotubes are implemented to simulate the CNS. The interactions between the layers of CNS due to van der Waals forces are included in the model. The uniformly distributed translational and torsional springs along the boundaries are considered to achieve a unified solution for different boundary conditions. To study the vibration characteristics of CNS, total energy... 

A simple and low-cost electrochemical deposition method is used to prepare reduced graphene oxide/polypyrrole/Cu2O-Cu(OH)2 (RGO/PPy/Cu2O-Cu(OH)2) ternary nanocomposites as the electrode material for supercapacitor application. First, graphene oxide-polypyrrole (GO/PPy) nanocomposite is electrochemically synthesized on Ni foam by electro-oxidation of pyrrole monomer in an aqueous solution containing GO and Tiron. Subsequently, the GO/PPy film is converted to the corresponding reduced form (RGO/PPy) by an effective and eco-friendly electrochemical reduction method. Then, a thin layer of Cu2O-Cu(OH)2 is formed on RGO/PPy film by chronoamperometry. The RGO/PPy/Cu2O-Cu(OH)2 nanocomposite is... 

The effect of a permanent magnetic field on the heat transfer characteristics of hybrid graphene-magnetite nanofluids (hybrid nanofluid) under forced laminar flow was experimentally investigated. For this purpose, a reduced graphene oxide-Fe3O4 was synthesized by using two-dimensional (2D) graphene oxide, iron salts and tannic acid as the reductant and stabilizer. Graphene sheets acted as the supporting materials to enhance the stability and thermal properties of magnetite nanoparticles. The thermo-physical and magnetic properties of this hybrid nanofluid have been widely characterized and it shows that the thermal conductivity increased up to 11%. The hybrid nanofluid behaves as a Newtonian... 

Au@TiO2-Graphene (GR) nanocomposite was prepared using photocatalytic reduction method. TiO2-GR nanocomposite was synthesized under UV irradiation of deaerated ethanolic suspension of TiO2. The nanocomposite was calcined at 400∘C followed by loading of highly dispersed Au nanoparticles throughout the deposition-precipitation method. The Au@TiO2/GR was characterized by X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, transmission electron microscope and the BET surface area measurements. It was found that Au-TiO2-GR and TiO2-GR nanoparticles have smaller crystalline size and higher surface area than pure TiO2. Presence of highly dispersed Au nanoparticles... 

In order to fabricate nanofiber scaffold for bone tissue engineering, electrospinning technique was employed. This technique produces nanofiberous scaffold supporting cell adhesion, migration, and proliferation. Here, we developed a novel conductive scaffold from poly-caprolactone, gelatin, and poly aniline/graphene nanoparticles. In this study, co-electrospinning was utilized to fabricate composite electrospun scaffold. The effect of polyaniline/graphene (PAG) nanoparticles on the mechanical properties and electrical conductivity of this hybrid scaffold was investigated. The result showed that PAG nanoparticles enbance both mechanical properties and electrical conductivity of the scaffolds.... 

Gas permeation through nanoscale pores is ubiquitous in nature and has an important role in many technologies 1,2 . Because the pore size is typically smaller than the mean free path of gas molecules, the flow of the gas molecules is conventionally described by Knudsen theory, which assumes diffuse reflection (random-angle scattering) at confining walls 3-7 . This assumption holds surprisingly well in experiments, with only a few cases of partially specular (mirror-like) reflection known 5,8-11 . Here we report gas transport through ångström-scale channels with atomically flat walls 12,13 and show that surface scattering can be either diffuse or specular, depending on the fine details of the... 

We fabricated a high rate capability supercapacitor based on fluorine-doped graphene-carbon nanotubes aerogel network (G-CNT-F). Based on the electrochemical impedance spectroscopy data, the fluorination decreases the charge transfer resistance of graphene sheets, while CNTs act as spacer in the 3D structure. Therefore, both treatments improved the electrochemical properties of the resulted aerogel. Based on the Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and XPS results, these excellent performances are attributed to semi-ionic bonds between fluorine and carbon. The specific capacitance of the graphene aerogel showed 78% decrease, when discharge current increases from 2 to 40 mA, while the... 

Supercritical water was used for simultaneous fragmentation and reduction of graphene oxide (GO) sheets into water-dispersible graphene quantum dots (GQDs) with tunable sizes. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) demonstrated that by increasing the temperature above the critical point of water, the average size and thickness of the GQDs were decreased and the size uniformity and production yield were increased. The results of thermal conductivity measurement of GQD nanofluids with different weight fractions indicated that the GQDs prepared at supercritical condition could enhance the thermal conductivity of water by 65% as compared to 35% for the GQDs synthesized at sub-critical... 

The modal analysis of a lossy coupled plasmonic waveguide consisting of two graphene sheets sandwiched among three SiO 2 layers is presented. This analysis extracts even and odd complex propagation constants in addition to even and odd characteristic impedances at various Fermi levels. It is shown that the first even mode is lossless in theory, but other modes are very lossy. Taking into account the losses, first, the transmission line (RLCG) model, including self and mutual elements, is constructed for various Fermi levels and frequencies. Then, the length of a lossy plasmonic directional coupler based on the coupled plasmonic waveguide is designed for a variety of Fermi levels. The... 

In this paper, we perform self-consistent field relaxation and electronic structure calculations of tetragonal B3N3 based on density functional theory, using LDA pseudopotential in the pressure range between − 30 and + 160 GPa. Although metallic B3N3 has a honeycomb structure, according to the electronic band structure, it has bulk properties (not layered) with effective mass non-interacting electron gas behavior near Fermi level (not Dirac massless) and a small anisotropy, about 0.56 in effective mass in the direction of MA relative to XM. Electronic calculations of the B3N3 under pressure show that increasing positive pressure causes the decrease of Fermi energy and total electronic... 

Semiconductor gas sensors have been developed so far on empirical bases, but now recent innovative materials for advancing gas sensor technology have been made available for further developments. Two-dimensional (2D) materials have gained immense attention since the advent of graphene. This attention inspired researchers to explore a new family of potential 2D materials. The superior structural, mechanical, optical and electrical properties of 2D materials made them attractive for next-generation smart device applications. There are considerable improvements and research studies on graphene, molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), tungsten disulfide (WS2), tin sulfide (SnS2), black phosphorus and other... 

The design of 3-dimensional (3-D) nanostructured materials on the novel current collectors has recently considered as a promising strategy for developing high-performance supercapacitors. Herein, in the first step, a novel 3-D nickel nanocone arrays (NCAs) are synthesized on the surface of nickel plate (NP) by a one-step electrodeposition method without using any template (NCAs-NP). Then, a simple and efficient method is developed for fabricating ternary metal sulfides electrodes based on the electrodeposition of nickel cobalt iron sulfide (Ni-Co-Fe-S) ultrathin nanosheets on the surface of NCAs-NP. Taking advantages of the unique flower like structure of Ni-Co-Fe-S ultrathin nanosheets and... 

Abstract: The magnetite (Fe3O4) nanoparticles were synthesized and supported on the reduced graphene oxide. The characterization of the catalyst was performed by FT-IR, VSM, SEM, XRD, and BET techniques. The obtained results indicated that the in situ synthesis of Fe3O4 using coprecipitation method caused the homogenous formation of magnetite nanoparticles on the surface of reduced graphene oxide (average particle size ~ 71.032 nm) with high stability and catalytic activity toward electro-Fenton removal of Reactive Red 195. The effect of various factors (current intensity, initial pollutant concentration, catalyst weight, and pH) was evaluated by response surface methodology using central...