President Kennedy’s dream of obtaining fresh water from seawater seemed has been realized as a great scientific achievement. As Norihito Tambo predicted, seawater reverse osmosis desalination (SWRO) has become a major technology in Middle Eastern countries. SWRO requires less energy compared with the distillation method. Even Middle Eastern countries, where the distillation method is still a major technology, have started to adopt the RO method in new desalination plants in accordance with government policy and following the trend of developing larger (half mega-ton per day and larger) so-called Mega-SWRO plants. With these trends in the global market, the requirements of sustainable SWRO desalination as green desalination for the 21 ^st century are as follows: (1) conservation of energy resources: renewable energy, (2) innovation of desalination technologies: new advanced membrane and membrane systems, (3) reduction of marine pollution: green desalination. The government-supported Mega-ton water system project has been conducted to solve issues related to (2) and (3). The combination of a low pressure SWRO membrane and a low-pressure, two-stage, and high-recovery SWRO system, also referred to as a SWRO-PRO hybrid system, it has enabled 20% energy reduction and 30% energy saving in total. Likewise, low environmental impact as green desalination has established a reliable operation using less chemical and chemical cleaning. In terms of low-cost renewable energy, in particular, solar energy is now available to solve issues related to renewable energy. By combining these sophisticated technologies, desalinated water has become affordable at $ 0.50/m ³ or less (as low as $ 0.28/m ³). SWCC has announced their future plans for SWRO. The main topic is directed to brine mining to obtain precious materials from the brine of SWRO. This plan will be connected to water and green hydrogen for a sustainable future.

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.

The dissociative chemisorption and energetically driven migration of atomic hydrogen on heterogenous electrocatalysts, i.e., hydrogen spillovers, which occur during electrochemical turnovers, have been intensively investigated recently on high-performance electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction. The elucidation of the hydrogen spillover not only reshapes the mechanistic understanding of the catalytic landscape but also aids in formulating efficient reaction pathways for catalyst designs. This perspective hence concisely summarizes the status of research on the hydrogen spillover effect in recent years, as well as the experimental methods to characterize the hydrogen spillover process and presents a prospect for future research direction.

Two novel fluorenyl-porphyrins 2Flu-TPP and 4Flu-TPP serving as charge trapping elements are designed and synthesized through BF ₃.Et ₂O catalyzed Friedel-Crafts reaction. With steric hindrance building blocks of fluorene units, 2Flu-TPP and 4Flu-TPP present highly nonplanar 3-dimensional structure, which could effectively inhibit molecular packing and intermolecular arrangement of porphyrins. As charge trapping elements, porphyrin groups provide the hole trapping sites, while fluorene units act as a hole blocking group to reduce the formation of leakage current paths. The pentacene-based organic field effect transistor memory devices based on 2Flu-TPP and 4Flu-TPP show memory windows of 48.93 and 49.20 V, respectively. The 2Flu-TPP device shows reliable endurance property with a large ON/OFF current ratio (1.1×10 ⁷) and good charge retention time (2.41×10 ⁵ after 2×10 ³ s). This study suggests that porphyrin based steric hindrance small molecular elements have great promise for high-performance organic field effect transistor memory.

Using renewable natural polymer resources to develop functional therapeutics and nanomedicine is a sustainable research area at the interface of multidisciplinary subjects such as green chemistry, polymer science and technology, nanobiomaterial and clinical medicine. It is disclosed that natural polysaccharides and their derivatives exhibited good biocompatibility, promising drug/gene delivery efficiency and immunomodulation capability, which have attracted tremendous attention in recent decades. This article reviewed up to date progresses of various natural polysaccharides and their derivatives as immunomodulators. The impact of molecular factors on immunomodulation-related features were stated, moreover, possible future outlooks on the natural polysaccharide-based immunomodulators were also discussed.

Purely organic room-temperature phosphorescence (RTP) materials are promising candidates for high-tech applications. Herein, we highlight new development that promotes RTP emission of organic small molecules, high phosphorescent efficiency and long lifetime, via inter/intro-molecular halogen bonding.

Extensive auxiliary density functional theory (ADFT) computations were performed to study the most stable structures, stabilities and chemical reactivity toward O ₂ of bimetallic Ni _mCu _n ( m + n ≤ 6) clusters. The shape of the most stable structures changes as the number of Ni and Cu atoms of the system under study increases with a consequent change of the energy, magnetic and reactivity properties. All obtained minimum-energy structures for these bimetallic systems composed with three and four atoms possess triangular and rhombic structures, respectively. According to our computations, the most stable structures for Ni ₄Cu, Ni ₃Cu ₂, and Ni ₂Cu ₃ clusters are trigonal-bipyramidal, while, for the NiCu ₄ cluster, two structures were identified as the most stable (with planar and trigonal-bipyramidal structures, respectively). The most stable structure for the Ni ₅Cu cluster is octahedral, while for the Ni ₄Cu ₂, Ni ₃Cu ₃, Ni ₂Cu ₄, and NiCu ₅ clusters, an incomplete pentagonal bipyramid was found as the ground-state structure. For all cluster sizes, as the number of Cu atoms in the system increases, the magnetic moment per atom tended to decrease. The O ₂ adsorption on bimetallic Ni _mCu _n ( m + n = 6) clusters is more favored when O ₂ binds by a bridge-type bond. Moreover, our computations indicate that O ₂ is preferentially adsorbed on the Ni atoms of bimetallic Ni _mCu _n ( m + n = 6) clusters.

Phthalide is a common type of functional group in natural products and synthetic motifs, which has a structural feature containing a benzo five-membered lactone ring. Phthalide is also a popular pharmacophore in many bioactive natural products and clinical drugs. This review focuses on chemical synthesis methods of phthalides established in the past ten years.

The bandgap ( E_g) of conjugated materials effects a variety of critical properties such that efforts to control the bandgap have become a basic tenet in the design of conjugated polymers. One goal of such efforts is to minimize the E_g with the goal of producing technologically useful low bandgap ( E_g < 1.5 eV) polymers. This perspective will introduce the two primary approaches to low E_g polymers ( i.e., quinoidal systems and donor-acceptor frameworks) and discuss important new directions for both design principles.

The results of the first tests aimed to assess antifouling activity of new AquaSun sol-gel paint coated on shipbuilding steel immersed in highly polluted port seawaters, compared to a state-of-the-art self-polishing commercial silyl acrylate antifouling topcoat containing high amounts of cuprous oxide and copper pyrithione, are promising.

Amphiphilic 4-(methylthio) benzoic acid (HMBA) combining soft methylthio and hard carboxylic groups was used to construct two isostructural coordination polymers of [Cu(MBA)] _n ( CP- 1) and [Ag(MBA)] _n ( CP-2), and one complex of Cu ₂(MBA) ₄(CH ₃CN) ₂·CH ₃CN ( 3). This ditopic HMBA ligand realizes stable coordination of its carboxylic group with low-valent soft Cu ⁺ ion ( in-situ reduction from Cu ²⁺) under the assistance of methylthio groups, forming CPs of CP- 1 and CP- 2. Meanwhile, based on the theory of hard and soft acid and base (HSAB), harder Cu ²⁺ ions ( in-situ oxidation from Cu ⁺) only coordinate to carboxylic groups, affording a paddle-wheel dinuclear complex 3. These two CPs were also taken for luminescent researches in solid state. CP-1 exhibits single-peak emission at 540 nm while CP-2 emits both at 499 and 528 nm with green luminescence. The emissions of CP-1 and CP-2 are both attributed to ³MLCT (triplet metal-to-ligand charge transfer) excitation state.

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.

Regioselective synthesis of carbohydrate building blocks by the application of biocatalytic approaches represents a convenient and sustainable way for the production of pharmaceuticals. The enormous potential of enzymes for the transformation of synthetic chemicals with high regioselectivity is on increasing awareness. This perspective focuses on showing some of the advances on the use of lipases engineering as immobilized catalyst for regioselective deprotection processes for potential industrial production glycoderivatives building blocks.

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.

A two-dimensional layered metal-organic framework, [Eu(C ₂₆H ₁₅NO ₄)Cl] _n (EuCDDB), was synthesized by the reaction of EuCl ₃·6H ₂O and 4,4'-(9 H-carbazole-3,6-diyl)dibenzoic acid (H ₂CDDB) through one-pot solvothermal process, and characterized by several technologies of single-crystal X-ray diffraction, powder X-ray diffraction, thermogravimetric analysis, and Fourier transform infrared spectrum. The crystal structure reveals that hydrogen bonding interaction happens between NH groups and coordinated chloride ions from the adjacent coordination layers, meanwhile, well-opened one-dimensional channel allows the accommodation of water molecules. These characteristics endow EuCDDB with a considerable proton conductivity of 3.70 × 10 ^-6 S cm ^-1 under 90 °C and relative humidity of 90%. In addition, EuCDDB also exhibits turn-on luminescent sensing on DMF molecules by enhanced Eu ³⁺ red emission resulting from efficient ligand-to-metal energy transfer process.