Aggregate of nanoparticles: rheological and mechanical properties

Abstract The understanding of the rheological and mechanical properties of nanoparticle aggregates is important for the application of nanofillers in nanocompoistes. In this work, we report a rheological study on the rheological and mechanical properties of nano-silica agglomerates in the form of gel network mainly constructed by hydrogen bonds. The elastic model for rubber is modified to analyze the elastic behavior of the agglomerates. By this modified elastic model, the size of the network mesh can be estimated by the elastic modulus of the network which can be easily obtained by rheology. The stress to destroy the aggregates, i.e., the yield stress (&#963;y ), and the elastic modulus (G') of the network are found to be depended on the concentration of nano-silica (&#981;, wt.%) with the power of 4.02 and 3.83, respectively. Via this concentration dependent behavior, we can extrapolate two important mechanical parameters for the agglomerates in a dense packing state (&#981; = 1): the shear modulus and the yield stress. Under large deformation (continuous shear flow), the network structure of the aggregates will experience destruction and reconstruction, which gives rise to fluctuations in the viscosity and a shear-thinning behavior.</p

Metallic 1T-TiS2 nanodots anchored on a 2D graphitic C3N4 nanosheet nanostructure with high electron transfer capability for enhanced photocatalytic performance

Photocatalysis is one of the most promising technologies for solar energy conversion. With the development of photocatalysis technology, the creation of low-dimensional structure photocatalysts with improved properties becomes more and more important. Metallic 1T-TiS2 nanodots with a low-dimensional structure were introduced into environmentally friendly two-dimensional g-C3N4 (2D-C3N4) nanosheets by a solvothermal method. It was found that the ultrathin TiS2 nanodots were uniformly anchored on the surface of the 2D-C3N4. The effective suppression of electron–hole recombination was realized due to the addition of the intrinsic metallic property of 1T-TiS2 in the prepared nanocomposite. The 5 wt% TiS2/2D-C3N4 nanocomposite exhibited the best photocatalytic performance and the degradation rate towards RhB was ca. 95% in 70 min, which showed an improvement of ca. 30% in comparison with 2D-C3N4. The results indicate that the obtained TiS2/2D-C3N4 nanocomposite is a promising photocatalyst for practical applications