It should be noted that nanotubes have been known to disperse in
chloroalkanes. The grafting and functionalization of CNTs in the current architecture, as well as the
low levels of COC concentration compared to pure solvents, would preclude such activity. If the
nanotubes are not grafted and the COC concentration is high, dispersion would have to be accounted
for in the fabrication of the hybrid remediation architectures.
Palladium (Pd) and Palladium Oxide (PdO) nanoparticles were dispersed in the hierarchical
format above and found to completely remediate TCE at low concentrations (Figure 10). Also notable
is that Pd on the porous carbon substrate by itself has comparable or lower degradation efficiency as
isolated Pd by itself. However, Pd on the hierarchical format (attached to CNT forests on the foam)
shows significantly higher degradation efficiency than all other materials and combinations tested.
This demonstrates the large increase in catalytic availability through hierarchical ordering.