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1. Degradation of Perfluorooctanoic Acid on Aluminum Oxide Surfaces: New Mechanisms from Ab Initio Molecular Dynamics Simulations

   https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.3c00948  

   Biswas, Sohag; Wong, Bryan M. (April 2023, Environmental Science & Technology)
2. Accessibility and Mechanical Stability of Nanoporous Zinc Oxide and Aluminum Oxide Coatings Synthesized via Infiltration of Polymer Templates

   https://doi.org/10.3390/polym15204088  

   Omotosho, Khalil D.; Lyon, Zachary; Shevchenko, Elena V.; Berman, Diana (October 2023, Polymers)

   The conformal nanoporous inorganic coatings with accessible pores that are stable under applied thermal and mechanical stresses represent an important class of materials used in the design of sensors, optical coatings, and biomedical systems. Here, we synthesize porous AlOx and ZnO coatings by the sequential infiltration synthesis (SIS) of two types of polymers that enable the design of porous conformal coatings—polymers of intrinsic microporosity (PIM) and block co-polymer (BCP) templates. Using quartz crystal microbalance (QCM), we show that alumina precursors infiltrate both polymer templates four times more efficiently than zinc oxide precursors. Using the quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) technique, we provide a comprehensive study on the room temperature accessibility to water and ethanol of pores in block copolymers (BCPs) and porous polymer templates using polystyrene-block-poly-4-vinyl pyridine (PS75-b-P4VP25) and polymers of intrinsic microporosity (PIM-1), polymer templates modified by swelling, and porous inorganic coatings such as AlOx and ZnO synthesized by SIS using such templates. Importantly, we demonstrate that no structural damage occurs in inorganic nanoporous AlOx and ZnO coatings synthesized via infiltration of the polymer templates during the water freezing/melting cycling tests, suggesting excellent mechanical stability of the coatings, even though the hardness of the inorganic nanoporous coating is affected by the polymer and precursor selections. We show that the hardness of the coatings is further improved by their annealing at 900 °C for 1 h, though for all the cases except ZnO obtained using the BCP template, this annealing has a negligible effect on the porosity of the material, as is confirmed by the consistency in the optical characteristics. These findings unravel new potential for the materials being used across various environment and temperature conditions. 

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3. Ferroelectric Aluminum-Doped Hafnium Oxide for Memory Applications

   https://doi.org/10.1109/DRC.2018.8442244  

   Ryu, Hojoon; Xu, Kai; Guo, Ji; Zhu, Wenjuan (August 2018, 76th Device Research Conference (DRC) 2018)
4. Aluminum Nanocrystals Form Voids under Their Native Oxide

   https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.nanolett.5c02981  

   Jacobson, Christian R; Ahmad, Aliyu; Tao, Ang; Qi, Xu; Bayles, Aaron; Ogundare, Adebola; Han, Yimo; Everitt, Henry O; Halas, Naomi J (August 2025, Nano Letters)
5. Tailoring the aluminum nanocrystal surface oxide for all-aluminum-based antenna-reactor plasmonic photocatalysts

   https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2321852121  

   Bayles, Aaron; Fabiano, Catherine J.; Shi, Chuqiao; Yuan, Lin; Yuan, Yigao; Craft, Nolan; Jacobson, Christian R.; Dhindsa, Parmeet; Ogundare, Adebola; Mendez Camacho, Yelsin; et al (March 2024, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)

   Aluminum nanocrystals (AlNCs) are of increasing interest as sustainable, earth-abundant nanoparticles for visible wavelength plasmonics and as versatile nanoantennas for energy-efficient plasmonic photocatalysis. Here, we show that annealing AlNCs under various gases and thermal conditions induces substantial, systematic changes in their surface oxide, modifying crystalline phase, surface morphology, density, and defect type and concentration. Tailoring the surface oxide properties enables AlNCs to function as all-aluminum-based antenna-reactor plasmonic photocatalysts, with the modified surface oxides providing varying reactivities and selectivities for several chemical reactions. 

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