Latest ArticlesDNAzyme is an artificially created deoxyribonuclease that is produced through in vitro screening. Due to the special properties of DNAzyme, such as catalytic activity, recognition function, excellent thermal stability and flexible designability, it has a broad prospect in constructing biosensors. Many innovative biosensors have been developed by integrating DNAzymes with nanomaterials that exhibit distinct physicochemical properties. This review focuses on the classification and application of DNAzyme-based biosensors, such as RNA-cleavage DNAzyme (8-17, 10-23 DNAzyme), peroxidase mimicking DNAzyme. Finally, some risks and challenges in this field are also discussed.
Photocatalytic water splitting provides a sustainable approach for converting solar energy into H2. Surface and interfacial engineering has become crucial strategies for enhancing photochemical efficiency and optimizing active sites. This review outlines several primary design strategies, including heteroatom doping (encompassing nonmetal and metal atomic doping), functional group modification, defect engineering, and heterostructure construction. These strategies aim to improve charge separation and surface reaction efficiency. The mechanistic roles of these strategies in metal oxides, sulfides, and carbon nitrides are discussed in terms of band structure tuning, the formation of electron transport pathways, and the modulation of intermediate adsorption energetics. The review examines the synergistic effects of these strategies in enhancing photocatalytic efficiency, stability, and environmental adaptability. Finally, we address future challenges, including interfacial structural stability, in situ characterization of reaction dynamics, and potential applications in sustainable energy systems. We believe that this review will provide insights into developing high-performance photocatalysts for water splitting.
Covalent-organic frameworks (COFs) have attracted growing interest as photocatalytic materials for uranium extraction because of their tunable structures and adjustable optoelectronic properties. This perspective summarizes recent progress in COF-based systems for the selective capture and photoreduction of U(Ⅵ), with a focus on molecular design strategies such as band-structure regulation, donor-acceptor framework construction, and interfacial functionalization to improve visible-light utilization and charge separation. Key mechanistic aspects of photoinduced uranium conversion, including electron-transfer pathways, uranium valence evolution, and interfacial reaction kinetics, are discussed. Current challenges, such as uncertainty in reduction products, incomplete mechanistic understanding, and limited cycling stability, are also addressed by highlighting the role of in situ characterization combined with theoretical analysis. Finally, the potential of artificial intelligence-assisted design and the development of macroscopic COF forms, such as aerogels and membranes, are briefly discussed as routes toward practical uranium extraction.
Cataracts, particularly diabetic cataracts (DC), represent a significant cause of blindness, exacerbated by diabetes mellitus. Monitoring intracellular pH (pHi) in human lens epithelial cells (HLECs) provides valuable insights into the pathogenesis of DC. This study introduces a novel phenol-armed flavylium-based fluorescent probe (FpH-2) for real-time pH monitoring in HLECs. The probe is facilely prepared to offer a reversible and highly sensitive fluorescence response to pH changes, with a pKa value of 6.66. The probe’s efficacy was demonstrated through its ability to monitor pH elevation under high glucose conditions, simulating diabetic stress. The study further investigates the effects of various clinical drugs on pH regulation in HLECs, offering new perspectives for managing DC. The findings suggest that pHi serves as a critical parameter for investigating DC pathophysiology and pharmacology, offering potential for advancing early diagnostic and therapeutic strategies.
When a deuterium atom (2H or D) replaces a hydrogen atom (1H) in a reactant molecule, the observed change in the rate (kinetic isotope effect, KIE) or equilibrium (equilibrium isotope effect, EIE) of a chemical reaction is known as a deuterium isotope effect (DIE). Because deuterium is twice as heavy as hydrogen, its zero-point energies (ZPEs), which are the lowest vibrational energies that a bond may have, differ significantly. Due to the obvious advantages of deuterium isotope effects (DIE) in total synthesis and mounting importance of deuterated drugs in pharmaceutical industry, development of synthetic routes to these deuterium-based active drugs via DIE is a challenging and important task. The primary goal of this mini-REVIEW is to demonstrate the novel uses of the DIE effect by placing the D atom at specific locations on drug molecules. This has been shown to serve as a "removable blocking group" to enhance yields and selectivity, while suppressing side reactions in the crucial stages of the complete synthesis of certain drug molecules. This review may be served as a perspective or guide for future study as well as inspire further innovative advancements in the field of total synthesis, and stimulate their applications in the related mechanistic studies.
Inspired by natural photosynthesis, visible-light-driven carboxylation of carbon dioxide for the synthesis of value-added chemicals has attracted considerable attention. However, the current limitation in carboxylation lies in the narrow absorption range of the photocatalysts used. These photocatalysts are predominantly activated by blue light, limiting the utilization of most of the solar light. Herein, we employed the organic dye N,N-bis(2,6-diisopropylphenyl)perylene-3,4,9,10-bis(dicarboximide) (PDI), along with its single-electron-reduced state PDI•− through consecutive photoinduced electron transfer (ConPET), effectively absorbs panchromatic solar spectrum for photocatalytic dicarboxylation. Mechanistic investigations using femtosecond time-resolved transient absorption (fs-TA) spectroscopy unequivocally identified the excited state of the singly reduced species, PDI•−*, rather than the doubly reduced form, as the key intermediate responsible for the reductive activation of alkenes. Furthermore, efficient solar-driven carboxylation of CO2 was successfully demonstrated under natural sunlight irradiation, underscoring the practical potential of this photocatalytic system.
Zinc anode as one of the most promising energy storage materials for aqueous zinc-ion batteries (AZIBs), suffer from significant degradation in cycle life and Coulombic efficiency (CE) due to uncontrolled dendrite growth and H2O-induced side reactions. In this work, we propose a nonionic dual-additive (gelatin, urea, abbreviated as GU) strategy that utilizes the dual hydrogen bond (H-bond) network H2O-locking structure. Due to the H-bond reinforcement effect introduced by the GU additive, the energy barrier for H-bond breaking and reconfiguration is elevated, effectively impeding the rapid proton shuttling between H2O molecules. It can induce the preferred growth of the (002) crystal plane by adsorbing onto other crystal planes, thereby achieving a dendrite-free zinc anode. Thus, the stability and reversibility of the zinc anode have improved significantly. The symmetrical cells stably cycled for more than 2100 h at 2.0 mA/cm2@1.0 mA/cm2, and the ZnCu asymmetric cells cycled for 1600 times at 5 mA/cm2@1 mAh/cm2 with an average CE of 99.4%. The full cells matched with the PANI cathode cycled more than 3500 times at 1 A/g. The work provides a new strategy for regulating the interfacial chemistry of zinc anodes to achieve highly stable high-performance zinc batteries.
Lipid droplets (LDs) serve as central hubs for lipid synthesis, storage, and mobilization, with their biological functions largely governed by the composition of neutral lipid cores. Although in situ probing of LD polarity has emerged as a promising strategy to decode compositional remodeling, probes capable of resolving the subtle and narrowly distributed polarity variations within LD interiors remain scarce. Here we report a phenylethynyl-bridged naphthalimide probe (TS-N) that enables sensitive decoding of LD polarity in living cells. Introduction of a conjugated phenylethynyl spacer significantly increases the intramolecular charge-transfer distance (dCT = 3.561 Å), resulting in enhanced solvatochromic responsiveness with an emission shift exceeding 220 nm across solvent polarity gradients. The probe exhibits a high polarity sensitivity of 14.5 nm per unit, enabling detection of subtle dielectric variations within weakly polar LD interiors. TS-N selectively targets LDs and supports long-term super-resolution imaging of dynamic processes, including LD fusion and mitochondria-LD interactions. Importantly, quantitative in situ fluorescence spectral analysis reveals that TS-N can resolve metabolic perturbation-induced polarity fluctuations at the single-droplet level and correlate dielectric changes with droplet size remodeling. This strategy integrates structural imaging with compositional decoding, providing a powerful tool for investigating LD metabolic heterogeneity and organelle interactions in living cells.
Silicon is considered as one of the most promising anodes for next-generation lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) due to its high theoretical specific capacity (3579 mAh/g) and abundant natural reserves. Compared to nano silicon, micron silicon offers distinct advantages, including lower specific surface area, reduced interfacial side reactions, higher initial coulombic efficiency, greater tap density, and lower cost, making it highly attractive for practical applications. However, its commercial viability is hindered by severe volume expansion, localized stress accumulation, repeated formation of unstable solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) layers, and electrical disconnection during cycling, which together result in rapid capacity fading and high irreversible capacity loss. Recent advances in electrolyte engineering, particularly interfacial modification strategies, have significantly improved the performance of micron silicon anodes by mitigating these challenges. This review provides an integrated perspective on the application of micron-sized silicon anodes by correlating lithium storage mechanisms, failure behaviors, and electrolyte-electrode interfacial evolution. Based on a systematic discussion of silicon lithiation/delithiation processes and associated structural instability, we clarify how interfacial degradation and irreversible lithium consumption govern the electrochemical performance of micron silicon. Then, electrolyte optimization strategies are critically analyzed, with an explicit comparison between liquid electrolyte regulation and solid-state electrolyte (SSE) design, highlighting their distinct roles in interfacial stabilization, stress accommodation, and cycling durability. From an electrolyte system design standpoint, this review summarizes integrated design principles for improving micron silicon performance and discusses the remaining challenges and opportunities toward their commercial application in high-energy-density battery systems.
The pursuit of high color purity in next-generation displays has spurred intense interest in multiple-resonance thermally activated delayed fluorescence (MR-TADF) emitters, which combine narrowband emission with high exciton utilization efficiency. However, the intricate relationship between molecular structure and photophysical properties renders rational design highly challenging. Herein, we present an integrated computational framework that unifies automated data extraction, de novo molecular generation and multi-property prediction for the targeted discovery of MR-TADF materials. Our approach leverages large-language-model-based literature mining and chemical structure recognition to construct a curated dataset (MR585), which guides a Transformer-based variational autoencoder for generative molecular design. Machine learning models trained on this dataset achieve test-set R2 values of 0.692 for predicting the singlet-triplet energy gap (ΔEST) and 0.788 for full width at half maximum (FWHM). From the generated candidates, we identify 15 structurally novel emitters with ΔEST values of 0.13–0.33 eV and narrow FWHMs of 26.2–46.6 nm. Theoretical analysis further reveals that two sulphur-containing BCzBN derivatives exhibit enhanced spin-orbit coupling, accelerated reverse intersystem crossing and reduced efficiency roll-off compared to their parent structures. This work establishes a comprehensive AI-driven platform that bridges automated knowledge extraction with generative chemistry, offering an efficient and scalable pathway towards high-performance narrowband emitters.
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