Hollow polymer capsules (HPC) are one of the widely studied topics in two-dimensional (2D) materials as ar-tificial cargo carriers that simulate natural cells containing life substances and complex life activities, In the past two decades, methodologies and application scenarios for the synthesis of polymer capsules with diversified morphology and multiple functions have received extensive attention. In particular, well-defined HPC with hollow compartments can serve as a drug delivery system with high load capacity, low toxicity, targeted and efficient release. This perspective aims to briefly summarize the developed fabrication strategy of HPC, evaluate their application characteristics in drug encapsulation and delivery, and propose a development direction of HPC as an outstanding drug carrier system.

This work presents current advances and perspectives on SnSe thin film solar cell technology. Nowadays, SnSe solar cells have not been able to achieve efficiency values higher than 7%. In this sense, it is necessary to study the potentiality of SnSe compound in solar cells that could help to understand further routes to promote this technology. It is demonstrated that efficiencies about 25% are expected under the ideal conditions of a low density of defects at SnSe bulk, the SnSe/buffer interface and the use of a buffer layer with a high band-gap, so that most photons get absorbed in the SnSe material with a good lattice matching to the SnSe and the negligible contribution of resistances. The comparison of our results with the one experimentally reported demonstrates that Jsc values constitute the first main issue to be solved in this technology.

Phthalides are an important class of compounds owing to their role as the key structural motifs in bioactive natural products and pharmaceutical synthesis. C—H activation has become a promising strategy for preparation of phthalides due to its advantages of high efficiency and atomic economy compared with the traditional methods. In this paper, we summarized recent advances on synthesis of 3-substituted phthalides via C—H activation according to different transition metal catalytic systems.

Two diverse series of nickel(II) β-iminoporphyrins were prepared in good yields by the reaction of corresponding 2-formyl- and 2-amino-5,10,15,20-tetraphenylporphyrins with primary amines and aldehydes, respectively, in toluene containing a catalytic amount of La(OTf)₃ under reflux conditions. These 2-iminoporphyrins further served as precursors to construct novel nickel(II) complexes of β-substituted porphyrinic thiazolidinones in moderate yields on reaction with mercaptoacetic acid in refluxing toluene. All the synthesized porphyrins have been characterized on the basis of spectral data analysis.

Membrane-assisted crystallization is a new unit operation for separation and/or promotion of pure crystals formation, where microporous hydrophobic membranes are used not as selective barriers but to promote water vapor transfer between phases inducing supersaturation in solution. Polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) is one of the most utilized polymers due to its excellent combination of properties and processability and has been used in a wide plethora of applications in membrane technology including membrane crystallization. PVDF has different polymorphs and this property is important in membrane technology because different phases might significantly affect the final membrane properties and performances, e.g., on membrane fouling and membrane wetting. A clear correlation between the dominating crystalline phases in PVDF and the performance in membrane contactor applications, and in particular in membrane crystallization is still missing and necessary. In this work, molecular dynamics simulation was utilized to analyze the relationship and influence of different polymorphs of PVDF membranes on crystals formation via membrane crystallization process. Atomistic sim-ulations were used to study the crystal nucleation and growth of sodium chloride in contact with amorphous, α and β PVDF hydrophobic polymer surfaces at a supersaturated concentration of salt. Predictions about the ability of α and β polymorphs to influence the nucleation and growth of salts were obtained. The results specified the crystals (as cluster) size distributions, the size of critical nuclei, and the nucleation rate. The amorphous PVDF led to the formation of smaller but more regular clusters in reference to the other samples; α PVDF produced much more inhomogeneous crystals and of small dimensions; β?PVDF produces crystals of larger dimensions than α PVDF.