Locating core-shell metal nanoparticles into a photoactive layer or at the interface of photoactive layer/hole extraction layer is beneficial for fully employing surface plasmon energy, thus enhancing power conversion efficiency (PCE) in plasmonic organic photovoltaic devices (OPVs). Herein, we first investigated the influence of silica shell thickness in Au nanorods (NRs)@SiO2 core-shell struc...

Selective adsorption of free glycerol from crude biodiesel was investigated by using mesoporous silica spheres coated with a thin shell of microporous silicalite-1. A polycrystalline silicalite-1 shell was formed upon first covering the external surfaces of various core templates with discrete silicalite-1 nanocrystals, and this was followed by short hydrothermal treatment to ensure shell unifo...

Near-infrared (NIR) femtosecond laser irradiation of metallodielectric core-shell silica-gold (SiO(2)-Au) nanoparticles can induce extreme local heating prior to the rapid dissipation of energy caused by the large surface area/volume ratio of nanometer-scale objects. At low pulse intensities, the dielectric silica core is removed, leaving an incomplete gold shell behind. The gold shells with wa...

A potential platform for simultaneous anticancer drug delivery and MRI cell imaging has been demonstrated by uniform hollow inorganic core/shell structured multifunctional mesoporous nanocapsules, which are composed of functional inorganic (Fe(3)O(4), Au, etc.) nanocrystals as cores, a thin mesoporous silica shell, and a huge cavity in between. The synthetic strategy for the creation of huge ca...

Supercapacitor behavior has been reported in a number of oxides including reduced BaTiO 3 ferroelectric ceramics. These so-called giant properties are however not easily controlled. We show here that the continuous coating of individual BaTiO 3 grains by a silica shell in combination with Spark Plasma Sintering is a way to process bulk composites having supercapacitor features with low dielectr...

Silica nanoparticles were directly coated with cobalt hydroxide by homogeneous precipitation of slowly decomposing urea in cobalt nitrate solution. The cobalt hydroxide was amorphous, and its morphology was nanoflower-like. The BET (Brunauer-Emmett-Teller) surface area of the core-shell composite was 221 m²/g. Moreover, the possible formation procedure is proposed: the electropositive cobalt io...

Multifunctional core-shell nanocomposites with a magnetic core and a silica shell doped with lanthanide chelate have been prepared by a simple method. First, citric acid-modified magnetite nanoparticles were synthesized by a chemical coprecipitation method. Then the magnetite nanoparticles were coated with silica shells doped with terbium (Tb(3+)) complex by a modified Stöber method based on hy...

The major challenges in practically utilising the immense potential benefits of nanomaterials are controlling aggregation, recycling the nanomaterials, and fabricating well-defined nanoparticulate materials using innovative methods. We present a novel innovative synthetic strategy for core-shell bimetallic nanoparticles that are well-defined, ligand-free, and robustly fixed on the outermost sur...

A facile one-pot microemulsion method has been developed for the synthesis of spherical silver core-silica shell (Ag@SiO2) nanoparticles with europium chelates doped in the shell through a silane agent. The method is significantly more straightforward than other extant methods. Measurements of the luminescent emissions from the Ag@SiO2 nanoparticles, in comparison with control silica nanopartic...