Applied Technology

Plasma Technology to Treat Pollutants

In the past few years, Chen Changlun, Shao Dadong, Hu Jun, Wang Xiangke and their colleagues from the Low Temperature Plasma Application Division, the Institute of Plasma Physics used the low temperature plasma technology to treat carbon nanotubes for the modification of their surface characteristics, thus overcoming the poor solubility and other limitations of carbon nanotubes and greatly expanding their scope of application. The research group applied the carbon nanotubes modified and assembled with the low temperature plasma technology in the research on the detection and control of environmental pollutants and has made a series of achievements. They used Ar/H2O, Ar/NH3, Ar/O2 and other microwave plasma to treat the surface of carbon nanotubes and introduced amino- and oxygen- functional groups into the surface, thus improving the hydrophilicity and dispersiveness of the carbon nanotubes, so that they can be used to prepare nano-solutions. Part of this research result was published on the Applied Physics Letter (2010, 96, 131504), Carbon (2010, 48, 939-948), the Journal of Physical Chemistry C (2009, 113, 7659-7665) and Diamond & Related Materials (in press). They used N2 radio frequency plasma to activate the surface of carbon nanotubes and then grafted organic monomer and natural polymer material to the surface to prepare carbon nanotube/organic composite. Part of this research result was published on the Journal of Physical Chemistry B (2009, 113, 860-864), Chemosphere (2010, 79, 679-685) and Plasma Processes and Polymers (in press, cover story). The research group also used the sol-gel method to assemble iron oxides onto carbon nanotubes, then used N2 radio frequency plasma to activate the surface of carbon nanotube/iron oxides and grafted organic monomer and natural macro-melocular material to the surface to prepare magnetic multi-composite nano-material, thus solving the key issue in solid-liquid separation. Part of this research result was published on the Environmental Science and Technology (2009, 43, 2362-2367), Journal of Hazard Material (2009, 164, 923-928) and Journal of Physical Chemistry B (jp-2009-11424k).