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We report that continuous MOF films with highly controlled thickness (from 44 to 5100 nm) can be deposited over length scales greater than 80 centimeters by a facile, fast, and cost-effective spray-coating method. Such success relies on our discovery of unprecedented perfectly dispersed colloidal solutions consisting of amorphous MOF nanoparticles, which we adopted as precursors that readily converted to the crystalline films upon low-temperature in situ heating. The colloidal solutions allow for the fabrication of compact and uniform MOF films on a great deal of substrates such as fluorine-doped tin oxide, glass, SiO2 , Al2 O3 , Si, Cu, and even flexible polycarbonate, widening their technological applications where substrates are essential. Despite the present work focuses on the fabrication of uniform cobalt-(2-methylimidazole)2 and zinc-(2-methylimidazole)2 films, our findings mark a great possibility in producing other high-quality MOF thin films on a large scale.

Solar thermoelectric devices play a significant role in addressing the problem of global warming, owing to their unique features of converting both waste heat and solar energy directly into electricity. Herein, a flexible 3D Janus helical ribbon architecture is designed, starting from well-aligned tellurium (Te) nanowire film, using an in situ redox process reacting with Ag

Rechargeable Li batteries based on group VIA element cathodes, such as tellurium, are emerging due to their capability to provide equivalent theoretical volumetric capacity density to O and S, as well as an improved activity to react with Li. Herein, bifunctional and elastic carbon nanotube (CNT) aerogel is fabricated to combine with Te nanowires, yielding two types of binder/collector-free Te cathodes to assemble Li-Te batteries. The CNTs with high electronic conductivity and hollow porous structure enable stable electric contact and fast transportation of Li+, while trapping Te and Li2Te in its network, triggering fast and stable Li-Te electrochemistry. Both cathodes are also provided with fine compressibility, helping to buffer their volume changes during lithiation/delithiation and improving electrode integrity. Both cathodes deliver high specific capacity, fine cycling stability, and favorable high-rate capability, proving their competence in building high-energy rechargeable Li-ion batteries.

Template-directed synthesis of nanostructures has been emerging as one of the most important synthetic methodologies. A pristine nanotemplate is usually chemically transformed into other compounds and sacrificed after templating or only acts as an inert physical template to support the new components. If a nanotemplate is costly or toxic as waste, to recycle such a nanotemplate becomes highly desirable. Recently, ultrathin tellurium nanowires (TeNWs) have been demonstrated as versatile chemical or physical templates for the synthesis of a diverse family of uniform 1D nanostructures. However, ultrathin TeNWs as template are usually costly and are discarded as toxic waste in ionic species after chemical reactions or erosion. To solve the above problem, we conceptually demonstrate that such a nanotemplate can be economically recycled from waste solutions and repeatedly used as template.

Manipulating nanowire assembly could help the design of hierarchical structures with unique functionalities. Herein, we first report a facile solution-based process under ambient conditions for co-assembling two kinds of nanowires which have suitable composition and functionalities, such as Ag and Te nanowires, for the fabrication of flexible transparent electrodes. Then Te nanowires can be etched away easily, leaving Ag nanowire networks with controllable pitch. By manipulating the assembly of Ag and Te nanowires, we can precisely tailor and balance the optical transmittance and the conductivity of the resulting flexible transparent electrodes. The network of Ag nanowires which have tunable pitch forms a flexible transparent conducting electrode with an averaged transmission of up to 97.3 % and sheet resistances as low as 2.7 Ω/sq under optimized conditions. The work provides a new way for tailoring the properties of nanowire-based devices.

Recently, porous hydrophobic/oleophilic materials (PHOMs) have been shown to be the most promising candidates for cleaning up oil spills; however, due to their limited absorption capacity, a large quantity of PHOMs would be consumed in oil spill remediation, causing serious economic problems. In addition, the complicated and time-consuming process of oil recovery from these sorbents is also an obstacle to their practical application. To solve the above problems, we apply external pumping on PHOMs to realize the continuous collection of oil spills in situ from the water surface with high speed and efficiency. Based on this novel design, oil/water separation and oil collection can be simultaneously achieved in the remediation of oil spills, and the oil sorption capacity is no longer limited to the volume and weight of the sorption material. This novel external pumping technique may bring PHOMs a step closer to practical application in oil spill remediation.

Flexible hetero-nanowire electronics: A simple solution process has been developed for the first time to fabricate macroscopic flexible, ordered Au-Te hetero-nanowire film electronics with tunable resistance from MΩ to Ω at room temperature (see the Figure). Nanowire films with an electrical conductivity as low as 10,000 S cm(-1) and a sheet resistance of 15Ω sq(-1) can generate reliable interconnections for light-emitting diode (LED) arrays. The Au-Te hetero-nanowire films remain conductive after bending 6000 times with a maximum bending radius of 2.0 mm without any obvious degradation.

This paper presents a new channel assignment scheme that efficiently improves the spatial frequency–spectrum reuse in a wireless network with heterogeneous demands, in which the cells are partitioned into a lot of clusters. Since the channel demands of each cell are different, this scheme adopts two stages to effectively assign channels. In the first stage, the cluster-based scheme allocates a number of channels to the cells of each cluster for satisfying the requirement of co-channel reuse. The channel demand of majority cells will be satisfied in this stage. In the second stage, when the channel requirement of most cells has been fulfilled, the tree-based assignment scheme allocates channels for the minority cells, which are still lacking of channels. Simulation results showed that the proposed scheme is superior to the previous schemes. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.