Phosgene, an important chemical warfare agent (CWA), has received great attention in the field of counterterrorism and public safety monitoring. Developing new sensing methods/tools for efficient detection of phosgene is an urgent challenge to be solved. For chemists, it is pivotal to create fast, low cost, portable, selective, sensitive, as well as visualizable chemical sensors/probes for real-time phosgene detection. This article reviewed and discussed current trend and statement of phosgene-specific fluorescent probes, providing concise “fast glance” and systematic “big picture” to the related researchers and public safety engineers. Moreover, the outlook in this field was also stated.

More attentions have been paid for developing anti-counterfeiting technologies to fight the endless emergence of fake and inferior products. Compared with inorganic quantum dots, colloidal carbon dots (C-dots) are emerging fluorescent nanomaterials, which have been used for various types of optical and electrical applications, because they have composition-dependent optical properties, including high quantum yield, tunable absorption/emission spectra and good chemical-/photo-stability. In this minireview, we summarized and updated the most recent research works for the use of colloidal C-dots for optical anticounterfeiting applications. We focus on the fluorescent, persistent luminescence and phosphorescent C-dots. In the end, we enclosed this minireview with our owner perspectives on the challenges of C-dots based anticounterfeiting.

Oxidation is a key transformation in chemistry being involved in a wide range of processes. In natural products, this reaction plays a critical role in the biosynthesis of several classes from different sources. In this context, the oxidation of menthol to menthone is an important reaction with a variety of applications in several fields, such as natural products, organic synthesis, and medicinal chemistry. Considering this, the present article aims to review different methodologies and oxidation reagents capable of performing this transformation, including the green chemistry process.