Browsing by Author "Wang, Weipeng"

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    Ultrahigh resistance of hexagonal boron nitride to mineral scale formation
    (Springer Nature, 2022) Zuo, Kuichang; Zhang, Xiang; Huang, Xiaochuan; Oliveira, Eliezer F.; Guo, Hua; Zhai, Tianshu; Wang, Weipeng; Alvarez, Pedro J.J.; Elimelech, Menachem; Ajayan, Pulickel M.; Lou, Jun; Li, Qilin; NSF Nanosystems Engineering Research Center Nanotechnology-Enabled Water Treatment
    Formation of mineral scale on a material surface has profound impact on a wide range of natural processes as well as industrial applications. However, how specific material surface characteristics affect the mineral-surface interactions and subsequent mineral scale formation is not well understood. Here we report the superior resistance of hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) to mineral scale formation compared to not only common metal and polymer surfaces but also the highly scaling-resistant graphene, making hBN possibly the most scaling resistant material reported to date. Experimental and simulation results reveal that this ultrahigh scaling-resistance is attributed to the combination of hBN’s atomically-smooth surface, in-plane atomic energy corrugation due to the polar boron-nitrogen bond, and the close match between its interatomic spacing and the size of water molecules. The latter two properties lead to strong polar interactions with water and hence the formation of a dense hydration layer, which strongly hinders the approach of mineral ions and crystals, decreasing both surface heterogeneous nucleation and crystal attachment.
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    Wafer-scale monodomain films of spontaneously aligned single-walled carbon nanotubes
    (Springer Nature, 2016) He, Xiaowei; Gao, Weilu; Xie, Lijuan; Li, Bo; Zhang, Qi; Lei, Sidong; Robinson, John M.; Hároz, Erik H.; Doorn, Stephen K.; Wang, Weipeng; Vajtai, Robert; Ajayan, Pulickel M.; Adams, W. Wade; Hauge, Robert H.; Kono, Junichiro
    The one-dimensional character of electrons, phonons and excitons in individual single-walled carbon nanotubes leads to extremely anisotropic electronic, thermal and optical properties. However, despite significant efforts to develop ways to produce large-scale architectures of aligned nanotubes, macroscopic manifestations of such properties remain limited. Here, we show that large (>cm2) monodomain films of aligned single-walled carbon nanotubes can be prepared using slow vacuum filtration. The produced films are globally aligned within ±1.5° (a nematic order parameter of ∼1) and are highly packed, containing 1 × 106 nanotubes in a cross-sectional area of 1 μm2. The method works for nanotubes synthesized by various methods, and film thickness is controllable from a few nanometres to ∼100 nm. We use the approach to create ideal polarizers in the terahertz frequency range and, by combining the method with recently developed sorting techniques, highly aligned and chirality-enriched nanotube thin-film devices. Semiconductor-enriched devices exhibit polarized light emission and polarization-dependent photocurrent, as well as anisotropic conductivities and transistor action with high on/off ratios.