Frontiers in Chemistry最新文献

Piezoelectric materials have emerged as versatile platforms with transformative potential in biomedical research, yet their clinical translation remains limited. This mini review examines how these materials generate reactive oxygen species (ROS) under mechanical stimulation to regulate biological processes, enabling antibacterial activity, wound repairing, tissue regeneration, and targeted cancer therapy through piezodynamic, chemodynamic, and photothermal pathways. Beyond treatment, piezoelectric materials facilitate controlled drug and gene delivery and function as self-powered biosensors for real-time monitoring. To this end, we also discuss key challenges hindering clinical translation, including instability, precipitation, fabrication complexity, and long-term biocompatibility, and conclude by outlining future strategies for developing flexible, biodegradable, AI-integrated platforms for precision and adaptive healthcare.

A continuous process integrating extracting valuable compounds from waste tobacco leaves for cigarette yarns dyeing and neophytadiene separation was developed, enabling sequential production of tobacco crude extract, colored yarns, tobacco-derived absolute, and neophytadiene. Systematic comparison of residues from four regions revealed that Lanxiong-derived biomass demonstrated the highest extract yield (25%), providing optimal raw material for scaled neophytadiene production. GC-MS and NMR analyses confirmed >98% purity and structural integrity of purified neophytadiene. When the crude extract was applied directly to cotton yarns dyeing, the dyed yarn with 1.5 wt% tobacco crude extract solution from Zunyi achieved a K/S value of 2.013 and exhibited a yellow-brown hue shift that met visual identification requirements for cigarette yarns. The dyed yarns retained over 90% tensile strength of untreated controls, while elongation and unevenness indices showed no statistically significant alterations. This integrated approach establishes a green and sustainable technological route for valorizing tobacco waste within circular economy frameworks.

The increased global food demand has resulted into extensive agricultural activities to offset the demand. The agri-activities generates large volumes of agri-food wastes (AFW) which creates disposal challenges and environmental pollution concerns. However, agri-wastes possess essential bioactive compounds with industrial applications. The primary focus of the study is to discuss techniques used in extraction, isolation, purification and characterisation of bioactive compounds found in AFW and their potential industrial applications. Traditional and emerging extraction processes; solid-liquid phase, liquid-liquid phase, distillation, crystallisation, thin layer chromatography and gel filtration chromatography are used for purification and isolation of bioactive compounds. FT-IR, NMR, UV-Vis and GC-MS analytical techniques are usually used in characterisation of bioactive compounds. AFW are reported to contain high levels of bioactive compounds with excellent antioxidants properties and biological activities that are ideal for cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and nutraceutical industries. However, the scalability of the use of bioactive compounds from AFW in various industries face challenges such as the use of large volumes of solvents and reagents in the extraction process that are a threat to human health and cause environmental pollution. The occurrence of phytochemical compounds with different properties and characteristics presents difficulty during extraction and purification processes. It is suggested that the use of pretreatment methods, innovative biological techniques and building closed-up systems that aim to repurpose the AFW into new products can promote their scalability and reduce environmental effects.

Piezoelectric materials have emerged as promising non-thermal, chemical-free sterilization agents, offering clear advantages over traditional methods such as heat, UV, or disinfectants. Their antimicrobial activity arises from direct microbial membrane disruption and reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation under mechanical stimuli like ultrasound or vibration via piezodynamic reactions. These approaches preserve material integrity, making them ideal for implants, wound dressings, and biofilm prevention. Recent advances focus on enhancing piezoelectricity via defect engineering, dopants, and band structure optimization to improve ROS production. This review highlights progress in piezoelectric materials as smart, sustainable antimicrobial platforms with broad biomedical and environmental applications.

Production of nano-sized solid-dosage drugs is useful for pharmaceutical industry owing to high solubility and efficacy of the drugs for patients, which can also reduce the drugs side effects. For the solid-dosage oral formulations, the nanomedicine can be prepared via either top-down or bottom-up approach to enhance the drug solubility which in turns enhances the drug bioavailability. A novel methodology for simulation and prediction of medicine solubility in supercritical solvent was developed based on supervised learning algorithms for classification of the data. The data for the simulations were collected on solubility of a model drug in supercritical carbon dioxide. The supercritical-based processing is usually used for preparation of nanomedicine with enhanced bioavailability, and the developed simulation method can help design and optimize the process for industrial applications. The data was obtained with temperature and pressure as the input parameters, whereas the drug solubility is considered as sole estimated output in the model. The validation outputs indicated that great agreement was obtained between the measured data and the simulated values with acceptable regression coefficient for the whole simulations. The simulation results revealed that the supervised learning algorithm is robust and rigorous for prediction of drug solubility data in supercritical conditions and can be used for process optimization and understanding the effects of process parameters. This study is innovative as it methodically assesses diverse machine learning methodologies, encompassing polynomial regression at different complexity tiers and the Gaussian Process Regressor for predicting pharmaceutical solubility. This comparative framework illustrates the bias-variance tradeoff and offers pragmatic guidance for choosing suitable models according to dataset attributes. The methodology presents a time-efficient and cost-effective alternative to conventional thermodynamic modelling for supercritical pharmaceutical processing.

Organic liquids immiscible with water, such as volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and plasticizers are widespread harmful environmental pollutants, which have long been considered a risk factor for chronic diseases in humans. VOCs or plasticizers in the outdoor environment largely originate from industrial manufacturing, combustion and leakage of transportation fuels, and biological metabolism. Consequently, in order to protect the environment and human health, there is an urgent need for point-of-need sensors for VOCs as well as plasticizer detection. Fluorimetric sensors are emerging attractive tool for monitoring concentration changes of these analytes in environmental samples, that can reduce need for advanced, instrumental methodologies. Various fluorescence-based strategies have already been demonstrated, with turn-on fluorescence approaches being particularly promising. These strategies are based on the interaction of fluorometric dyes or conjugated polymers embedded in polymeric matrices with the target analytes. The proposed approaches show great potential for real-time monitoring of hazardous pollutants in environmental applications, offering cost-efficient, simple, and portable alternatives to conventional analytical techniques. However, it is worth emphasizing that despite the great variety of research topics, the current state of knowledge does not exhaust this field, and many challenges still remain to be overcome.

An organoammonium-dihydrogenphosphate compound (C₇H₁₁N₂)H₂PO₄ was synthesized and characterized. The intra-and intermolecular interactions responsible for the stability of our compound within the crystal lattice have been thoroughly discussed. FT-IR spectroscopic analyses have confirmed the well atomic organization and stability of our compound. Using the RDG and NCI approaches, we identified strong N-H···O and O-H···H hydrogen bonds, along with notable van der Waals (vdW) interactions between the cationic units and the phosphate anion, confirming the key role of non-covalent forces in stabilizing the crystal structure. Intermolecular interactions were further elucidated by Hirshfeld surface analysis. Moreover, dispersion-corrected Density Functional Theory provided insights into chemical reactivity properties. The compound was also analyzed using solid-state spectroscopies. This contribution enhances the understanding of the structural diversity of organic-dihydrogenphosphate compounds.

Hydrogen sulfide (H₂S) generated by industrial processes (such as petroleum refining, natural gas purification, and coal processing) is a highly toxic and corrosive gas, which is detrimental to human health and environment. Electrocatalytic decomposition of H₂S for simultaneous desulfurization and hydrogen production has emerged as a promising approach to addressing environmental pollution whilst achieving valuable utilization of H₂S. Currently, there are two pathways for electrochemical decomposition of H₂S, namely, direct and indirect decomposition. For the direct pathway, H₂S is electrocatalytically oxidized into sulfur at anode using electrocatalysts. However, this approach is hindered by electrocatalyst deactivation due to sulfur passivation. Conversely, the indirect pathway effectively prevents the anodic sulfur passivation by introducing soluble redox couples as mediators, transferring H₂S oxidation reaction from electrode to liquid phase. In this regard, the selection of redox mediators is critical since it affects H₂S oxidation efficiency, sulfur purity, and overall decomposition voltage. In light of the challenges associated with above-mentioned electrochemical H₂S decomposition techniques, this review presents recent advancements in strategies to mitigate anodic sulfur passivation for direct decomposition method, as well as the development of redox mediators and process optimization for indirect decomposition method. Meanwhile, a comparative analysis of characteristic and reaction mechanism of both approaches is provided. Finally, perspectives are given on the current challenges and future research directions in the field of electrocatalytic H₂S splitting technology.