A kind of SiO2/Diatomite/PDMS/KH-570/Me-MQ composite superhydrophobic self-cleaning building coating material was successfully synthesised at room temperature. Without any subsequent heat treatment process, the coating can be prepared by spraying or brushing on smooth internal wall and rough external wall of building with a water contact angle (WCA) larger than 160 degrees and a sliding angle (SA) less than 1.5 degrees. The coating can maintain excellent superhydrophobic and self-cleaning properties after various tests including sand impact, sandpaper abrasion, acid/alkali solution immersion, water impact and outdoor weatherability test. Moreover, after 0.5 h impact by pH 4 methyl blue solution, the superhydrophobic performance of the coating still keep excellent and indicates that the coating can withstand a certain degree of acid rain impact. Futhermore, the coating also can be brushed or sprayed on various smooth, rough, hard or soft substrates, and they all can exhibit excellent superhydrophobic performance. It is reasonable to believe that such superhydrophobic coating material has a good practical application potential in building self-cleaning and antifouling.

In this work, N-doped TiO2 hierarchical microspheres were prepared by a hydrothermal process for high performance supercapacitor. This structured microsphere can provide a large specific surface area and a suitable pore size, which is conducive to electrolyte infiltration, and the nitrogen doping can improve the electrical properties of intrinsic TiO2. Combining these two strategies, the specific capacitance of N-doped TiO2 microspheres increases from 2.26 to 11.89 mF/cm(2) at current density of 1 mA/cm(2) and the capacitance remains 90.5% of the original capacity after 10,000 cycles. (C) 2021 Published by Elsevier B.V.

Hydrogenated amorphous silicon carbon nitride (a-Si-C-N:H) films embedded with carbon nanoclusters were deposited by plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD) method. The microstructure and oxidation properties of the films were mainly analysed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray photoelectroscopy (XPS), Raman and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM). The influence of the NH3 flow rate on the film oxidation properties in air at room temperature has been investigated. The results showed that the carbon atoms tend to bond with each other during the film deposition and then form carbon nanoclusters. In addition, with increasing NH3 flow rate, the results also indicated that more N and C atoms bonded with Si atoms would be replaced by O atoms, and the N atoms mainly bonded with C atoms and the O atoms mainly bonded with Si atoms. Furthermore, the films became more and more dense, but the film oxidation was more and more serious. The oxidation of the film was mainly attributed to the production of the related silicon dangling bonds and the formation of the smaller carbon nanoclusters.