As emerging artificial biomimetic membranes, smart or intelligent membranes that are able to respond to environmental stimuli are attracting ever-increasing interests from various fields. Their permeation properties including hydraulic permeability and diffusional permeability can be dramatically controlled or adjusted self-regulatively in response to small chemical and/or physical stimuli in their environments. Such environmental stimuli-responsive smart membranes could find myriad applications in numerous fields ranging from controlled release to separations. Here the trans-membrane mass-transfer and membrane separation is introduced as the beginning to initiate the requirement of smart membranes, and then bio-inspired design of environmental stimuli-responsive smart membranes and four essential elements for smart membranes are introduced and discussed. Next, smart membrane types and their applications as smart tools for controllable mass-transfer in controlled release and separations are reviewed. The research topics in the near future are also suggested.
Mesoporous TiO_2-B/anatase microparticles have been in-situ synthesized from K_2Ti_2O_5 without template.The TiO_2-B phase around the particle surface accelerates the diffusion of charges through the interface,while the anatase phase in the core maintains the capacity stability.The heterojunction interface between the main polymorph of anatase and the trace of TiO_2-B exhibits promising lithium ion battery performance.This trace of 5%(by mass) TiO_2-B determined by Raman spectra brings the first discharge capacity of this material to 247 mA · h ·g^(-1),giving 20%improvement compared to the anatase counterpart Stability testing at 1 C reveals that the capacity maintains at 171 mA·h·^(-1),which is better than 162 mA·h·g^(-1) for single phase anatase or 159 mA·h·g^(-1) for TiO_2-B.The mesoporous TiO_2-B/anatase rnicroparticles also show superior rate performance with 100 mA·h·g^(-1) at 40 C,increased by nearly 25%as compared to pure anatase.This opens a possibility of a general design route,which can be applied to other metal oxide electrode materials for rechargeable batteries and supercapacitors.
