Nanostructured conductive polymers have been widely researched for various applications such as energy storage and conversion, chemical/biological sensors, and biomedical devices. Recently, novel ...synthetic methods which adopt doping molecules as cross-linker have been developed to prepare conductive polymer gels (CPGs) with cross-linked network and 3D hierarchically porous nanostructures. The CPGs, as well as their derived carbon frameworks, exhibit high electrical conductivity, large surface area, structural tunability, and hierarchical porosity for rapid mass/charge transport, which contribute to their high performance when applied for energy storage and conversion devices. This Perspective highlights the key features of CPGs and their derived carbon frameworks, discusses their possibilities in terms of rational synthesis and energy-related applications, and proposes future directions for their technological development.
Conductive polymers combine the attractive properties associated with conventional polymers and unique electronic properties of metals or semiconductors. Recently, nanostructured conductive polymers ...have aroused considerable research interest owing to their unique properties over their bulk counterparts, such as large surface areas and shortened pathways for charge/mass transport, which make them promising candidates for broad applications in energy conversion and storage, sensors, actuators, and biomedical devices. Numerous synthetic strategies have been developed to obtain various conductive polymer nanostructures, and high-performance devices based on these nanostructured conductive polymers have been realized. This Tutorial review describes the synthesis and characteristics of different conductive polymer nanostructures; presents the representative applications of nanostructured conductive polymers as active electrode materials for electrochemical capacitors and lithium-ion batteries and new perspectives of functional materials for next-generation high-energy batteries, meanwhile discusses the general design rules, advantages, and limitations of nanostructured conductive polymers in the energy storage field; and provides new insights into future directions.
Nanostructured conductive polymers (nCPs) have aroused considerable research interest owing to their unique properties over their bulk counterparts, such as high electrical conductivity, large surface areas, and shortened pathways for charge/mass transport. These advantageous features make them promising candidates for applications in energy storage devices.
Atmospheric water harvesting (AWH)—producing fresh water via collecting moisture from air—enables sustainable water delivery without geographical and hydrologic limitations. However, the fundamental ...design principle to prepare materials that can convert the water vapor in the air to collectible liquid water is still mostly unknown. Here, a super moisture‐absorbent gel, which is composed of hygroscopic polypyrrole chloride penetrating in hydrophilicity‐switchable polymeric network of poly N‐isopropylacrylamide, is shown. Based on such design, a high‐efficiency water production by AWH has been achieved in a broad range of relative humidity. The synergistic effect enabled by the molecular level integration of hygroscopic and hydrophilicity‐switchable polymers in a network architecture presents controllable interaction between the gel and water molecules, simultaneously realizing efficient vapor capturing, in situ water liquefaction, high‐density water storage and fast water releasing under different weather conditions. Being an effective method to regulate migration of water molecules, such design represents a novel strategy to improve the AWH, and it is also fundamental to other water management systems for environmental cooling, surficial moisturizing and beyond.
Super‐moisture‐absorbent gels that consist of functional polymers simultaneously exhibit hygroscopicity and controllable hydrophilicity. Such a gel can spontaneously capture atmospheric water, and efficiently deliver liquid water under various environmental conditions. This work not only reveals the necessity of gel‐based moisture absorbency, but also paves the way for fresh water production from air.
Photoluminescence originated from doped activators in the solid state materials usually faces the challenge of concentration quenching, restricting the further increase of photoluminescence ...intensity. Herein, a new strategy is demonstrated by the heavy doping Mn2+ into MgAl2O4, leading to the broad‐band near‐infrared (NIR) emission peaking at ≈825 nm with a full width at half maximum of ≈125 nm, as well as high internal quantum efficiency of ≈53% upon 450 nm laser excitation. Density functional theory calculation and extend X‐ray absorption fine structure provide a understanding of Al3+/Mn2+ disorder and Mn2+–Mn2+ aggregation in spinel Mg1–xAl2O4:xMn2+ with high Mn2+ content, which enables the formation of superexchange coupled IVMn2+–VIMn2+ pair. The NIR light‐emitting diodes fabricated by the 450 nm blue chip and Mg0.50Al2O4:0.50Mn2+ phosphor gives a high NIR output power of ≈78.41 mW under a driven current of 120 mA, and night‐vision application as light source in the dark is demonstrated. This work opens new paths for rational design of efficient broad‐band NIR emitting phosphor, and also provides new insights into the Mn2+ luminescence and the applications.
A new strategy via Mn2+–Mn2+ aggregation is demonstrated by heavy doping Mn2+ into spinel MgAl2O4, enabling the formation of broad‐band near‐infrared (NIR) emission peaking at ≈825 nm with an FWHM of ≈125 nm. The NIR light‐emitting diode fabricated by this phosphor and 450 nm blue chip generates an NIR output power of ≈78.41 mW, showing high potential for night‐vision application.
Solar steam water purification and fog collection are two independent processes that could enable abundant fresh water generation. We developed a hydrogel membrane that contains hierarchical ...three-dimensional microstructures with high surface area that combines both functions and serves as an all-day fresh water harvester. At night, the hydrogel membrane efficiently captures fog droplets and directionally transports them to a storage vessel. During the daytime, it acts as an interfacial solar steam generator and achieves a high evaporation rate of 3.64 kg m
h
under 1 sun enabled by improved thermal/vapor flow management. With a homemade rooftop water harvesting system, this hydrogel membrane can produce fresh water with a daily yield of ~34 L m
in an outdoor test, which demonstrates its potential for global water scarcity relief.
Abstract
2‐Hydroxypyridines have emerged as versatile nucleophiles in organic synthesis. The
N
‐ and
O
‐functionalization of 2‐hydroxypyridines affords straightforward and practical methods for the ...construction of
N
‐substituted 2‐pyridones and
O
‐substituted 2‐hydroxypyridines, which are important structural motifs in numerous natural products, pharmaceuticals and biologically active compounds. Nonetheless, the competition between
N
‐ and
O
‐functionalization of 2‐hydroxypyridines presents an inevitable and formidable challenge. In the past few decades, chemoselective
N
‐ and/or
O
‐functionalization of 2‐hydroxypyridines has received extensive attention from the synthetic community, resulting in the development of elegant and effective strategies to address this chemoselectivity. This review provides a summary of recent advancements in the realm of transition‐metal and organo‐catalyzed, as well as visible‐light promoted chemoselective functionalization of 2‐hydroxypyridines, including
N
‐alkylation,
N
‐allylation,
N
‐arylation,
N
‐alkenylation,
O
‐alkylation,
O
‐allylation,
O
‐arylation, and
O
‐alkenylation.
The development of a scalable, low-cost, and versatile biosensor platform for the sensitive and rapid detection of human metabolites is of great interest for healthcare, pharmaceuticals, and medical ...science. On the basis of hierarchically nanostructured conducting polymer hydrogels, we designed a flexible biosensor platform that can detect various human metabolites, such as uric acid, cholesterol, and triglycerides. Owing to the unique features of conducting polymer hydrogels, such as high permeability to biosubstrates and rapid electron transfer, our biosensors demonstrate excellent sensing performance with a wide linear range (uric acid, 0.07–1 mM; cholesterol, 0.3–9 mM, and triglycerides, 0.2–5 mM), high sensitivity, low sensing limit, and rapid response time (∼3 s). Given the facile and scalable processability of hydrogels, the proposed conductive hydrogels-based biosensor platform shows great promise as a low-cost sensor kit for healthcare monitoring, clinical diagnostics, and biomedical devices.
We propose an effective highest occupied d‐orbital modulation strategy engendered by breaking the coordination symmetry of sites in the atomically precise Cu nanocluster (NC) to switch the product of ...CO2 electroreduction from HCOOH/CO to higher‐valued hydrocarbons. An atomically well‐defined Cu6 NC with symmetry‐broken Cu−S2N1 active sites (named Cu6(MBD)6, MBD=2‐mercaptobenzimidazole) was designed and synthesized by a judicious choice of ligand containing both S and N coordination atoms. Different from the previously reported high HCOOH selectivity of Cu NCs with Cu−S3 sites, the Cu6(MBD)6 with Cu−S2N1 coordination structure shows a high Faradaic efficiency toward hydrocarbons of 65.5 % at −1.4 V versus the reversible hydrogen electrode (including 42.5 % CH4 and 23 % C2H4), with the hydrocarbons partial current density of −183.4 mA cm−2. Theoretical calculations reveal that the symmetry‐broken Cu−S2N1 sites can rearrange the Cu 3d orbitals with
dx2-y2
${d_{x^2 - y^2 } }$
as the highest occupied d‐orbital, thus favoring the generation of key intermediate *COOH instead of *OCHO to favor *CO formation, followed by hydrogenation and/or C−C coupling to produce hydrocarbons. This is the first attempt to regulate the coordination mode of Cu atom in Cu NCs for hydrocarbons generation, and provides new inspiration for designing atomically precise NCs for efficient CO2RR towards highly‐valued products.
Breaking the coordination symmetry of Cu site in atomically precise Cu6 cluster forms Cu‐S2N1 site, which rank the dx2‐y2 orbital as the highest occupied d orbital to favor the specific coordination between C atom of CO2 and Cu−S2N1 site. This binding mode is conductive to the generation of *COOH instead of *OCHO, thereby switching the product of electrocatalytic CO2 reduction reaction to higher‐valued hydrocarbons.
Chiral hybrid metal halides with a high dissymmetry factor (glum) and a superior photoluminescence quantum yield (PLQY) are promising candidates for circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) light ...sources. Here, we report eight new chiral hybrid manganese halides, crystallizing in the non‐centrosymmetric space group P212121 and showing intense CPL emissions. Oppositely‐signed circular dichroism (CD) and CPL signals are detected according to the R‐ and S‐configurations of the chiral alkanolammonium cations. Time‐resolved PL spectra show long averaged decay lifetimes up to 1 ms for (R‐3‐quinuclidinol)MnBr3 (R‐1). The glum of polycrystalline samples for coordinated structures (23×10−3) is more than doubled compared with the non‐coordinated ones (8.5×10−3), due to the structural variations. R‐1 exhibit both a high glum and a high PLQY (50.2 %). The effective chirality transfer mechanism through coordination bonds, with strongly emissive MnII centers, enables a new class of high‐performance CPL materials.
Two structural types of chiral hybrid manganese bromides both exhibit circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) emissions. The coordinated type results in much higher dissymmetry factor (glum) due to the chirality of the inorganic framework induced by the distortion from coordination.
It has been widely recognized that inflammation, particularly chronic inflammation, can increase the risk of cancer and that the simultaneous treatment of inflammation and cancer may produce ...excellent therapeutic effects. Berberine, an alkaloid isolated from Rhizoma coptidis, has broad applications, particularly as an antibacterial agent in the clinic with a long history. Over the past decade, many reports have demonstrated that this natural product and its derivatives have high activity against both cancer and inflammation In this review, we sqmmarize the advances in studing berberine and its derivatives as anti-inflammatory and anti-tumor agents in the digestive system; we also discuss their structure-activity relationship. These data should be useful for the development of this natural product as novel anticancer drugs with anti-inflammation activity.
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