Latest ArticlesFar-ranging and improper uses of pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) over the last few decades have led to severe water contamination that imposes serious effects on human beings and the ecological system. Therefore, there is an increasing demand for a highly-efficient and environmentally friendly technology for the removal of PPCPs from aqueous solutions. Adsorption technology is an appropriate technology to solve this issue. Carbon-based composites, ranging from modified activated carbon to functionalized biochar, show great potential for this purpose. This review hence elaborates on the environmental occurrences and risks of PPCPs and summarizes the recent progress in removing PPCPs from water using carbon-based adsorbents. The pore structure, relatively large specific surface area (SSA), abundant surface functional groups, highly aromatic structures and the extra excellent characteristics of the cooperative materials contribute to their outstanding adsorption performance. Furthermore, the biochar-clay material is cost effective and more efficient compared to traditional activated carbon regarding the adsorption of PPCPs. Among the emerging adsorbents, graphene and carbon nanotubes composites show superior adsorption ability. Their adsorption mechanisms, such as electrostatic interactions, hydrogen bonding, and pore filling, are discussed in details.
Hollow fiber microfiltration (MF) and ultrafiltration (UF) membrane processes have been extensively used in water purification and biotechnology. However, complicated filtration hydrodynamics wield a negative influence on fouling mitigation and stability of hollow fiber MF/UF membrane processes. Thus, establishing a mathematical model to understand the membrane processes is essential to guide the optimization of module configurations and to alleviate membrane fouling. Here, we present a comprehensive overview of the hollow fiber MF/UF membrane filtration models developed from different theories. The existing models primarily focus on membrane fouling but rarely on the interactions between the membrane fouling and local filtration hydrodynamics. Therefore, more simplified conceptual models and integrated reduced models need to be built to represent the real filtration behaviors of hollow fiber membranes. Future analyses considering practical requirements including complicated local hydrodynamics and nonuniform membrane properties are suggested to meet the accurate prediction of membrane filtration performance in practical application. This review will inspire the development of high-efficiency hollow fiber membrane modules.
Genomic deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is selected as the ideal carrier for preserving and transmitting the genetic information over the course of evolution. However, the genomic DNA is constantly exposed to various endogenous and environmental threats, causing a diversity of damaged bases, lesions, mismatches and base-pair modifications in the genome, eventually leading to genomic instability and cancers. Base excision repair (BER) is the most important repair mechanism, repairing a variety of DNA damages arising from oxidation, alkylation, methylation, deamination, and hydrolysis reactions. DNA glycosylases are responsible for initiating the first step of the BER pathway through cleaving the N-glycosidic bond between the damaged base and the DNA backbone. However, abnormal DNA glycosylases are associated with a variety of diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, neurological disease and inflammation, suggesting the important role of DNA glycosylases in cancer diagnosis and treatment. Therefore, it is highly desirable to monitor the activity of DNA glycosylases, gaining a deep understanding of the restoration process of damaged DNA and clinical diagnosis. Recently, a series of novel DNA glycosylases detection methods with excellent performance have been developed. In this minireview, we summarize the recent advances in DNA glycosylase assays including amplification-free assay and amplification-assisted assay. Firstly, a brief introduction of amplification-free assay for DNA glycosylase is given. Then, amplification-assisted assays for DNA glycosylases are discussed in detail. Ultimately, the conclusion and prospects of the directions of DNA glycosylase assays are provided.
Chiral pillar[n]arenes have shown great research value and application prospect in construction of chiral materials and chiral applications, due to their inherent planar chiral configurations, chiral recognition ability, easy modification and highly symmetric hydrophobic cavity. This review systematically summarized the conformation inversion factors of planar chiral Pillar[5]arenes (pR/pS), such as solvents, temperature, substituent size, alkyl chains, chiral and achiral guest molecules. We firstly introduced the applications of chiral pillar[n]arenes for constructing chiral materials and pointed out that planar conformation inversion showed a great potential role in constructing chiral materials. Then, we mainly concluded the chiral applications of chiral and planar chiral pillar[n]arenes like chiral enantiomer analysis by circular dichroism, electrochemistry or chiral fluorescence sensing. From this review, we found that the inherent planar chiral conformation of chiral pillar[n]arenes have played a very important role in chiral field in the future.
As environmental crises such as global warming become more and more serious due to the large amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the burning of fossil fuels, much attention has been paid to carbon neutrality. Hydrogen, with zero carbon content, is a clean and renewable energy carrier having a large energy density. It is considered as one of the most desirable alternatives to fossil fuels. Electrochemical water splitting, unlike the steam reforming process accelerating fossil fuels depletion and CO2 emissions, can produce H2 powered by renewable energy such as solar or wind. As a promising way to promote carbon neutralization, hydrogen production by electrolysis of water is meaningful both in terms of scientific research and practical application. In order to drive electrochemical water splitting with low power consumption, efficient, durable and affordable electrocatalysts with low overpotentials are in urgent need. Therefore, this mini-review briefly introduces the current development status and mainstream obstacles of carbon-based materials used in electrochemical water splitting.
Photocatalytic optical fibers are promising for the degradation of gaseous and volatile pollutants in air due to their high specific surface area, high light utilization efficiency, easy regeneration, and sustainability. In particular, photocatalytic optical fibers have proven highly useful for the removal and conversion of different kinds of air pollutants in air. However, these fibers suffer from low photocatalytic degradation efficiencies. In this review, we have focused on introducing photocatalytic quartz optical fibers and photocatalytic plastic optical fibers for the degradation and transformation of gas-phase air pollutants. The principle of photocatalytic optical fibers and main methods for improving their photocatalytic and light utilization efficiencies based on semiconductor photocatalytic coatings are summarized. Moreover, the Langmuir-Hinshelwood kinetic rate equation was summarized to analyze the photocatalytic reduction of gaseous pollutants. Finally, an outlook on the future of photocatalytic optical fibers toward the removal and conversion of gaseous air pollutants is discussed.
Developing high-performance electrocatalysts for CO2 reduction reaction (CO2RR) is crucial since it is beneficial for environmental protection and the resulting value-add chemical products can act as an alternative to fossil feedstocks. Nonetheless, the direct reduction of CO2 into long-chain hydrocarbons and oxygenated hydrocarbons with high selectivity remains challenging. Copper (Cu) shows a distinctive advantage that it is the only pure metal catalyst for reducing CO2 into multi-carbon (C2+) products and the certain facets (e.g., (100), (111), (111)) of Cu nanocrystals exhibit relatively low energy barriers for the formation of specific products (e.g., CO, HCOOH, CH4, C2H4, C2H5OH, and other C2+ products). Therefore, extensive studies have been carried out to explore the relationship between the facets of Cu nanocrystals and corresponding catalytic products. In this review, we will discuss the crystal facet-dependent electrocatalytic CO2RR performance in metallic Cu catalysts, meanwhile, the detailed reaction mechanisms will be systematically summarized. In addition, we will provide a personal perspective for the future research directions in this emerging field. We believe this review is helpful to guide the design of high-selectivity Cu-based electrocatalysts for CO2RR.
Manipulating the fluid transport in the microscale pores and channels is playing a paramount role in the realization of the versatile functions of microfluidics. In recent years, using light to control the fluid behavior in the microchannels/pores has attracted many researchers' attention due to the advantages of light such as non-contact stimulation, tunable excitation, high spatial and temporal resolution. With efforts, great achievements and progresses have been achieved for photochemical effect driven microscale flow control, including fluid pumping, flow rate control, and fluid mixing, etc. In this review, we discuss the responsive mechanisms of photochemical effect driven fluid behavior control at the microscale. We also give a comprehensive review on the latest research progresses in photochemical effect controlled microfluid behaviors. Besides, prospective opportunities for the future development of light control of microscale flow are provided to attract scientific interest for the fast development and applications of various microchannel/pore systems.
Electrocatalytic oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is one of the important half reactions of electrocatalytic water splitting. However, the slow kinetic process involving four-electron transfer severely limits its reaction efficiency, which in turn limits the overall electrocatalytic hydrolysis efficiency. In order to improve the activity of the electrocatalytic OER, researchers mainly update the catalyst from three aspects, that is, increase the conductivity of the electrocatalyst, and the quantity and quality of active sites. Two-dimensional (2D) engineering can effectively reduce the resistance of the materials and greatly increase the number of electrochemically active sites, while heterometal doping, or the bimetal strategy, can improve the quality of active sites via changing the electronic structure of the material. Thus, the combination of the two can enhance the activity of electrocatalytic OER in all three aspects: conductivity, number and quality of active sites. However, there is currently no review on this topic. Therefore, in this review, we summarize the application of bimetallic 2D materials in electrocatalytic OER from four aspects: the structure, synthesis strategy, catalytic efficiency, and reaction mechanism.
Carboranes are a class of polyhedral boron-carbon molecular clusters, they can serve as versatile ligands in stabilizing low-valent main group element compounds, due to their exceptionally thermal and chemical stabilities, easy modifications at the cage carbon vertices, as well as large spherical steric effects. These carborane-based ligands provide interesting opportunities for the synthesis of low-valent main group element compounds with novel structure and reactivity, which indeed enrich the chemistry of low-valent element main group compounds. This review summarizes the recent advances in the chemistry of low-valent group 13 and group 14 element compounds supported by carborane-based ligands. Achievements and perspectives in this new and flourishing field are discussed in this review.
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