Ultrathin films of TiO2, ZrO2, and Al2O3 were conformally created on SnO2 and TiO2 photoelectrodes via atomic layer deposition (ALD) to examine their influence upon electron transfer (ET) from the electrodes to a representative molecular receptor, I3(-). Films thicker than 2 Å engender an exponential decrease in ET time with increasing film thickness, consistent with tunneling theory. Increasin...

A high-throughput pulsed laser ablation (HT-PLA) system was developed to rapidly prepare uniformly sized singleand multi-metallic nanoparticles with different diameters for catalytic applications. Catalytic materials containing Rh, bimetallic Rh/Pt and trimetallic Rh/Pt/Au nanoparticles were synthesized from targets prepared by blending, tableting and sintering powders of pure metals, and by di...

Introduction The fuel processor in which hydrocarbon fuels can be converted into hydrogen has recently attracted much attention as a result of the advancement in the fuel cell technology. In a fuel processor, the water-gas shift (WGS) reaction plays a crucial role in the transformation of CO, a well-known poisonous gas to electrode of fuel cell, into hydrogen through reaction with steam. In WGS...

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) relaxation times are shown to provide a unique probe of adsorbate-adsorbent interactions in liquid-saturated porous materials. A short theoretical analysis is presented, which shows that the ratio of the longitudinal to transverse relaxation times (T1/T2) is related to an adsorbate-adsorbent interaction energy, and we introduce a quantitative metric esurf (based...

TheZrO2-based materials are practically important as the thermal barrier coatings(TBC) for high temperature gas turbines, due to their low thermal conductivity, hightemperature thermal stability and excellent interfacial compatibility. Studies of the phaseequilibira, phase transformation, and thermodynamics of the ZrO2-based systems can providethe necessary basic knowledge t...

OBJECTIVE Mineral Trioxide Aggregate (MTA) is a calcium silicate cement composed of Portland cement (PC) and bismuth oxide. Hydroxyapatite has been incorporated to enhance mechanical and biological properties of dental materials. This study evaluated physicochemical and mechanical properties and antibiofilm activity of MTA and PC associated with zirconium oxide (ZrO2) and hydroxyapatite nanopar...

Protein adsorption onto titanium (Ti) or zirconia (ZrO2) was evaluated using a 27 MHz quartz crystal microbalance (QCM). As proteins, fibronectin (Fn), a cell adhesive protein, and albumin (Alb), a cell adhesion-inhibiting protein, were evaluated. The Ti and ZrO2 sensors for QCM were characterized by atomic force microscopy and electron probe microanalysis observation, measurement of contact an...