Qing Chen

Wenzhou University · College of Chemistry & Materials Engineering

As one of the most successful cathode materials, LiNi1-y-zMnyCozO2 (NMC) has become the preferred choice for automotive lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). Currently, its lithium source, LiOH, is not based on primary lithium salts and the route is unsustainable due to the large resource losses and high carbon footprint. In this study, a desirable alterna...

Interests on lithium extraction from the Chinese salt-lake brines have regained momentum due to the growing demand of lithium for application in electric vehicles. Characterized by a high Mg²⁺/Li⁺ ratio (MLR), the Chinese salt-lake brine has troubled scientists and engineers for decades. Recent progress has shown significant advantages of membrane...

The ability of extracting/inserting more than one Li per formula has made Li-rich layered oxides (LLO) one of the most promising cathode materials. However, irreversible transformations triggered by over-delithiation such as phase transitions, oxygen release and Jahn-Teller effects of Mn3+ have limited its practical application. In this work, the i...

Optically pure amino alcohols are widely used as the essential building blocks for catalysts and auxiliaries in asymmetric synthesis, especially in pharmaceuticals. The catalytic hydrogenation has been regarded as the most effective route to produce chiral amino alcohols, but it is still unsatisfactory, which is mainly manifested in the involvement...

Aluminum electrode foils are the most essential components inside electrolytic capacitors, which are widely used in diverse electronic systems. The production involves the usage of various chemicals, and it generates a huge amount of exhausted bath solution consisting of highly-concentrated ammonium adipate and trace Cl⁻ impurity. The loss of these...

For industries around the world, the hydrometallurgical roast–leach–electrowin process is the most common means of producing zinc metal. Dechlorination from the highly-concentrated zinc sulfate electrolyte is of vital importance to the zinc industry. In a recently published work, we innovatively employed diffusion dialysis (DD) to selectively remov...

Zinc metal is mainly produced by a hydrometallurgical process, in which zinc electrolyte is recirculated, and impurities especially halides are accumulated then, which have dreadful impacts on the process and product. Until now numerous efforts have been made to remove halides from the electrolyte, but none of them are fully satisfying, and it is s...

Abstract Currently nanofiltration predominates the membrane application of dye desalting and purification, and it is very effective to produce low-salt dye from raw dye with high inorganic salt impurities. However it is difficult and costly to produce dye products with ultralow impurities, because the desalting performance decreases proportionally...

Well defined gold embedded maghemite hybrid nanowires are synthesized, and their structures are fully characterized. They are composed of porous γ-Fe2O3 shells and tiny embedment of gold nanoparticles (3-10 nm), which is novel and very different from the conventional "surface decoration" configuration. These hybrid nanowires are produced by dealloy...

Ultra-high-basicity polyaluminum, an important aluminum industrial product, is manufactured by the oxidation of metallic Al with acids. The process is not economically and chemically efficient because the aluminum atoms were reduced first from alumina to aluminum metal, and then oxidized again to get the polyaluminum. In this work, an integrated sy...

An integrated electrolysis system was built to synthesize polyaluminum chloride with ultra high-basicity and even pure Al13. The system converts AlCl3 solution from aluminum electrode foil industry waste to Al13 chloride directly with reasonable cost, typically $1.09 per kilogram as Al2(OH)5Cl·2H2O at 25 °C. Electrolyte temperature and current dens...

An electrochemical sensor was constructed via self-assembly of chiral metal complexes Λ-[Os(phen)3(ClO4)2] on reduced graphene oxide (rGO) sheet. Cyclic voltammetry and differential pulse voltammetry illustrate that the sensor could detect 1,1′-2-binaphthol lower than 10 μM. The response current of S-1,1′-2-binaphthol is 1.4 times higher than that...

Stereoisomerism is a fundamental chemistry issue and has been intensively investigated because of its importance in organic chemistry, biology, and pharmacology. Molecules with freely rotatable single bonds have many interconvertable conformers. Herein, we report the surface-adsorption-induced conformer resolution by employing azobenzene-3,3-dicarb...

The geometry of hexafluorotribenzo[a,g,m]coronene with n-carbon alkyl chains [FTBC-Cn (n=4, 6, 8, 12)] and their supramolecule self-assembly on a highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) surface has been optimized by molecular dynamics simulations using COMPASS force field at 0K, 298K, 333K and 353K. Electronic properties and intermolecular intera...

Di-perylene-3,4,9,10-tetracarboxylic acid bisimides (diPBI) is an n-type graphene molecule with nonplanar conformation. The controllable assembly and molecular adlayer structures of tetrachlorinated diPBI derivatives with different alkyl chains substitutions on highly oriented pyrolytic graphite were studied by scanning tunneling microscopy. When t...

A chiral Kagome network was fabricated at an aqueous solution/Au(111) interface by using a complicated stereo supramolecule thiacalix[4]arene tetrasulfonate as a building block. It opens the possibility to construct a 2D nanoporous network by various functional supramolecules and shows potential application in host-guest chemistry as well as chiral...

OPV3-CHO molecules are employed to prepare assembly on highly oriented pyrolytic graphite, and the so-prepared assembly is investigated by scanning tunneling microscopy. In the assembly chiral domains are observed with various structures such as linear and windmill. The chiral structural formation, stability, transition, and possible unification ar...

A rapid and facile method was found to access one-molecule-thick free-standing organic nanosheets in a high yield with controllable size and shape by self-assembly of cucurbit[8]uril and small organic molecules.

Solvent-regulated structural transition: 1-Octanol controls the structure of BIC assembly from lamellar, quadrangular to hexagonal under the direction of the transformation of hydrogenbond patterns (see STM images).

A monodendron molecule, 5-(benzyloxy)isophthalic acid derivative (BIC, C47H76O7), has been employed to fabricate self-assembly on graphite surface. The molecules were dissolved in different solvents of 1-phenyloctane, 1,2,4-trichlorobenzene (TCB), and 1-octanoic acid. The effects of these solvents on BIC self-assemblies were investigated by scannin...

The self-assembly and aggregation of melamine (M), and a mixture of melamine with uric/cyanuric acid (UA/CA) are investigated by performing scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) on graphite and mica surfaces at room temperature. Two-dimensional (2D) porous molecular networks and disordered adlayers are found, respect...

Two-dimensional self-assembly of OPV4 molecule and its coadsorption with C(18)H(37)Br are investigated by scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) on highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) revealing a structural difference and transition from helix to lamellar.

Molecular arrangement and transition in the domain boundary of a chiral two-dimensional assembly is clearly revealed by high-resolution STM images on an HOPG surface and a linear dislocation formed by molecular trimers and located at opposite chiral domains is found to directly reverse the chirality on DTCD self-assembly.

The adsorption and adlayer structures of tetrathiofulvalene (TTF), tetracyanoquinodimethane (TCNQ) and TTF-TCNQ on Au(111) have been systematically investigated by in situ electrochemical scanning tunneling microscopy (ECSTM) and cyclic voltammetry in 0.1 mol L−1 HClO4. All the three molecules were found to form well-ordered adlayers in the double-...

Graphene molecules, hexafluorotribenzo[a,g,m]coronene with n-carbon alkyl chains (FTBC-Cn, n = 4, 6, 8, 12) and Janus-type “double-concave” conformation, are used to fabricate self-assembly on highly oriented pyrolytic graphite surface. The structural dependence of the self-assemblies with molecular conformation and alkyl chain is investigated by s...

Surface photochemistry processes have attracted increasing interest from both fundamental and application viewpoints. The development of scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) provides us a great opportunity to investigate photo-induced structural transition on surface with a high spatial resolution in real space. The detailed structural information o...

Hybrid supramolecular architectures have been fabricated with acceptor 1,4-bis(4-pyridylethynyl)-2,3-bis-dodecyloxy-benzene (PBP) and donor 2,6-bis(3,4,5-tris-dodecyloxy-phenyl)dithieno[3,2-b:2',3'-d]thiophene (DTT) compounds on highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) surfaces, and their structures and molecular conductance are characterized by s...

Alkane molecules and their derivatives are composed of alkyl chain and functional groups that dominate the interactions of intermolecule and molecule/substrate and result in different self-assemblies on solid surface. In the present paper, the self-assemblies of alkanes and alkane (C18H38, C19H40) derivatives are studied on HOPG surface at room tem...

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) with different numbers of pi-electrons and geometric symmetry of pi-systems, including anthracene, phenanthrene, pyrene, triphenylene, perylene, benzo[ghi]perylene, and coronene, were chosen to modify glassy carbon electrodes (GCEs) by self-assembling. The self-assembled monolayer of PAHs was investigated by...