Chemistry - An Asian Journal最新文献

The accelerating rise of atmospheric CO₂ remains a central driver of global climate change, highlighting the urgent need for scalable and energy-efficient carbon capture technologies. Porous carbons are among the most promising solid adsorbents due to their high surface area, chemical stability, and tunable pore structures, which facilitate efficient CO₂ adsorption and low regeneration energy. Lignin is a renewable aromatic by-product of the pulp and paper industry, which offers exceptional promise as a sustainable carbon source due to its abundance (50-70 Mt/year), high carbon content (>60 wt%), and rich aromatic structure. Unlike previous reviews broadly covering biomass-derived carbons, this review focuses on recent advances in lignin-derived porous carbons for CO₂ capture, correlating preparation strategies with structural evolution and adsorption performance. Chemical activation, templating, and hybrid methods enable precise control of ultramicropores (<0.7 nm), mesoporous channels, and heteroatom functionalities, which synergistically determine adsorption capacity, selectivity, and regeneration energy. Emerging approaches such as amine functionalization introduce strong chemisorption sites for post-combustion and direct-air capture, while AI-assisted design accelerates understanding of synthesis-property-performance relationships. Despite remarkable progress, remaining challenges in feedstock variability, scalability, and greener process development are discussed along with future prospects for sustainable CO₂ capture using lignin-derived porous carbons.

We investigated the chiroptical properties of an axially chiral binaphthyl derivative bearing a carbazole donor and a cyano acceptor, with particular emphasis on circularly polarized fluorescence (CPF) and circularly polarized phosphorescence (CPP). The compound was synthesized via Pd-catalyzed carbazole introduction followed by Ni(cod)₂-mediated cyanation. Theoretical calculations revealed that the HOMO is localized on the carbazole donor, whereas the LUMO is distributed over the cyanonaphthalene acceptor, indicating intramolecular charge-transfer (ICT) character. Consequently, the emission spectra exhibited pronounced positive solvatochromism, accompanied by two fluorescence lifetime components (1.3-1.4 and 7.6-13 ns). The (S)-enantiomer showed positive circular dichroism and CPF signals independent of solvent polarity, with |g_lum| values of 1.9-3.1 × 10^-3. In frozen 2-methyltetrahydrofuran, a well-resolved CPP spectrum with vibronic structure was observed, displaying an opposite sign relative to CPF and exhibiting enhanced |g_lum| values of 6.9-14.0 × 10^-3.

This study reports the development of an electrically conductive concrete (ECC) prepared by incorporating 2 vol.% carbon fibers (CF) and iron-rich almandine garnet sand into a Portland cement matrix, followed by surface coating with activated carbon to enable electrochemical energy storage through an electrode layer. The optimized ECC formulation exhibited significantly enhanced electrical and mechanical performance, achieving a low electrical resistivity of 15 Ω·cm after 28 days of curing, along with compressive and flexural strengths of 39 and 13.4 MPa, representing approximately 50% and 35%, improvements respectively over conventional mortar. FE-SEM and elemental analyses confirmed the effective infusion and dispersion of carbon fibers within the cementitious matrix, establishing a continuous conductive network. When employed as a conductive substrate for supercapacitor electrodes and evaluated in a hydroquinone/Na₂SO₄ aqueous electrolyte, the ECC-based device delivered a high specific capacity of 217 C g^{- 1}, an energy density of 17.36 Wh kg^{- 1}, and retained 78% of its initial capacity after 5000 charge-discharge cycles. These results demonstrate the potential of carbon-fiber-reinforced ECC as a multifunctional material that enables the integration of structural integrity with electrochemical energy storage, offering a promising pathway toward intelligent and sustainable infrastructure systems.

Laser spectroscopy under cryogenic gas-phase conditions enables the high-precision investigation of intrinsic molecular properties by minimizing perturbations from external environments such as impurities, solvents, and counterions. In particular, cryogenic ion-trap (CIT) spectroscopy has broadened access to a diverse range of molecular and cluster ions. When combined with electronic ultraviolet-visible (UV-Vis) spectroscopy, which is typically performed in action schemes (photofragmentation, evaporation of inert tag molecules, laser-induced fluorescence, and so on), it serves as a sensitive and accurate probe for the vibronic structures, bonding characteristics, conformations, and excited-state dynamics of target ions. In this review, we present a brief overview of typical experimental setups and key techniques for CIT spectroscopy; we then survey recent case studies for various ions, including carbocations and protonated hydrocarbons, organic dyes, host-guest complexes, microhydrated ions, hypervalent ions, metal clusters, and chemical intermediates formed in solution. We highlight the precise and unambiguous information accessible using this method and illustrate the rapidly expanding scope of modern gas-phase chemistry.

Human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs) modulate infant-microbe and immune interactions, yet broader structure-function understanding is limited by low abundance, isomeric complexity, and difficulty controlling multivalent presentation. We introduce a glycomimetic platform that assembles trivalent HMO displays from a tri-alkyne core via copper-catalyzed azide-alkyne cycloaddition. Azido-functionalized HMOs, including lacto-N-neofucopentaose I, lacto-N-fucopentaose I, lacto-N-fucopentaose V, and lacto-N-triose II, are installed to give mono-, di-, or tri-substituted conjugates in a single step; combining mono- and di-substituted intermediates furnishes heterovalent (mixed-display) constructs. Substitution patterns reveal motif-dependent steric effects that cap trisubstitution, consistent with largely independent reactivity of the three alkyne sites. The workflow offers orthogonal control over display density, motif composition, and interglycan distance, enabling homogeneous or mixed presentations from simple building blocks. This scalable approach delivers well-defined multivalent HMO architectures to enable presentation-dependent comparisons in glycan-protein recognition and to facilitate structure-function exploration beyond native scaffolds.

We present a simple method that produces visible solid lipid microparticles (SLMs) encapsulating biogel particles for cosmetics. Biogel particles are prepared via W/O/W emulsification, and then SLMs encapsulating biogel particles are produced through continuous W/O/W multiple emulsification. We find that the presence of solid lipid affects the appearance, size, structure, crystallization properties, and physical protection of multiple emulsions, as observed through particle size analysis, fluorescence microscopy, polarized light imaging, and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). This multiple emulsification method provides significant guidance for encapsulating various hydrophilic and lipophilic active ingredients in biogel particles and SLMs, respectively.