Themed collection 2023 Green Chemistry Reviews

Environmental benefit will be greatest if we green the step causing the most harm.

This review examines the possible functional roles of liquid natural deep eutectic solvents (NaDES) in plants and translating it to the laboratory.

Rethinking nitration: sustainable electrochemical C-N functionalization. This work reviews diverse inorganic nitrogen sources for fine chemical production, with a perspective on innovative pathways to harness alternative nitrogen sources' potential.

Biocatalysts raised by the green chemistry and circular chemistry principles can constitute the most important and efficient strategy for achieving many of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals launched by the UN.

Europe's energy crisis has made green routes for ammonia and methanol synthesis economically competitive. This presents an opportunity for Europe to lead the grand transition towards a sustainable chemical industry.

Stages of the penetration of catalytic technology and the necessity for fruitful collaboration.

The use of natural product limonene as natural product extraction solvent offers multiple benefits that go beyond its environmentally benign nature.

Phytic acid is a source of biogenic phosphorus that could serve as a key platform chemical in future biorefineries, helping to close the loop on the phosphorus cycle.

Photocatalyst has been developed as an effective tool for C–N coupling due to high selectivity, mild reaction conditions and low energy comsume.

Proposal of a general theory of greenness, connecting all chemical disciplines and not only; the description of basic concepts and relationships.

The HCO₃⁻-HCO₂⁻ cycle, where aqueous solutions of formate salts are hydrogen and energy carriers, offers the opportunity of combining electrochemical and thermochemical operations, and of coupling CO₂ capture with energy/hydrogen storage.

Tracking osmolyte patterns in biological contexts can help design novel multicomponent deep eutectic systems, which mimic the nuanced microenvironment of biomacromolecules operating within these biological contexts.

A comprehensive overview of the cutting-edge applications of ionic liquids in new energy, electronic information chemicals and biotechnologies.

This review provides a comprehensive overview of salt assisted synthesis of carbon based materials based on the role of salts in synthesis systems. Meanwhile, the application in energy related fields is emphasized.

This review addresses recent advancements in lignin extraction using ADES and underlying mechanism. Additionally, the economic and environmental sustainability is evaluated, highlighting the feasibility of industrial-scale applications in future.

This article focuses on the major obstacle of sluggish ORR and OER kinetics of the cathode in LABs and reviews the main advances of the major designing principles of various nanoscale bifunctional electrocatalysts, and the relation to the enhancing OER/ORR catalytic activity.

We provide a comprehensive review of the molten salt strategy for the preparation of carbon-based materials by highlighting the roles played by molten salts. The application of these carbons in supercapacitors is also discussed.

Unlocking lignin potential by selective demethylation of its monomers and oligomers.

The electrochemical cascade process majorly satisfies the essential criteria of green synthesis. Being an Integrated synthetic strategy it can produce more molecules in a shorter time and thus provides a modern strategic tool in the arsenal of synthetic chemists.

Using CO₂ as feedstock to fabricate valuable products has become essential to green and sustainable chemistry and represents a rewarding challenge.

The development of sustainable energy technologies has received considerable attention to meet increasing global energy demands and to realise organisational goals (e.g., United Nations, the Paris Agreement) of carbon neutrality.

Fungi are a diverse group of organisms that play an essential role in the biosphere.

As a versatile and environmentally friendly chemical, hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) is in high demand.

Future sustainable approach of bioenergy production that uses microalgae–bacteria consortium to produce bioelectricity and biofuel for industrial and daily activities.

Sustainable and effective methods for green synthesis of carbon anodes for lithium-ion batteries is reviewed in this work.

This review delves into degradable vinyl polymers with stimuli-cleavable moieties, their chemistry, mechanisms, and applications in environmental remediation, drug delivery, advanced functional materials, and surface modification.

Bio-based chemicals synthesized by lignin offer a promising pathway of bioenergy utilization to achieve the target of the Paris Agreement with <2 °C of climate warming temperature.

Deep eutectic solvents provide a versatile platform for CO₂ capture and subsequent conversion into value-added chemicals.

This review highlights the recent advances in various electrochemical and photochemical reactions using methanol as a sustainable C1 source.

By revealing the intrinsic link between the inherent advantages of nanocellulose and hydrogels, we highlight the applications of nanocellulose hydrogels in medical treatment, electricity, sensor, environmental governance, food, and agriculture.

Polymers and surfactants are used in many technological and industrial applications such as the manufacture of functional materials and coatings, personal care and pharmaceutical products, food science, paints or tertiary oil recover.

Cobalt phosphate (CoPi) based material has attracted great attention due to its low cost, good stability, high catalytic activity, and redox properties. This review presents the recent advances of CoPi in OER process.

The mechanism, substrate transformation, photoelectrodes, and configurations of photoelectrochemistry (PEC) of biomass are reviewed, different from PEC water splitting, photocatalysis, or electrocatalysis.

The recent advances on the electrochemical selenofunctionalization of unsaturated C–C bonds were comprehensively summarized in this review.

The most recent developments in carbon materials for hybrid evaporation-induced electricity generation systems are discussed in detail and analyzed in depth.

This review summarizes recent advancements of 2D supramolecular membranes for separations. This topic can provide new insights on developing 2D supramolecular membranes with high selectivity, mild flux, good stability and appreciable reversibility.

This review summarizes the emerging advanced technologies including bio-, photo-, electro-, and low-temperature thermocatalysis for recycling and upgrading of waste plastics under mild conditions.

Coupling catalytic water splitting with a mixed ionic–electronic conducting (MIEC) membrane reactor has been demonstrated as a very promising approach to enhance the hydrogen production rate by extracting the oxygen produced.

The environmental threat of waste polyvinyl chloride (PVC) is growing. But the unique chemical structure of PVC makes its recycling itself have the ability to cause environmental harm. More advanced recycling processes are required.

A combined pyro-metallurgical process with green chemistry principles for the recycling of valuable metals from spent lithium-ion batteries is reviewed.

The preparation methods, formation mechanism, properties and applications of functional carbon dots derived from biomass and plastic wastes are reported.

This review summarizes the design, preparation and promotion strategies of layered metal phosphosulphide-based electrocatalysts for water splitting; future perspectives and challenges are also briefly discussed.

We review the synthesis, structure and electrochemical applications of 2D nanomaterials, with particular emphasis on the relationship between their structure and catalytic activity.

The exciting research activities in the fields of ionic liquid membranes (ILMs) for liquid separation are reviewed, covering the preparation strategy, applicability, transport mechanism, and future perspectives.

This critical review covers advances in the preparation of the important polyester monomers terephthalic acid (TPA), 2,5-furandicarboxylic acid (FDCA), and ethylene glycol (EG), with particular focus on biocatalytic approaches.

The past two decades have seen fruitful efforts in shaping cellulose into functional materials using ionic liquids. This Tutorial Review aims at providing guidance from a materials science perspective to stimulate more research in this field.

This work reviewed how ionic liquids support hydrogen energy technologies for production, storage and utilization.

Cellulose is the most abundant renewable polymer resource in nature and cellulose-based materials are expected to serve as viable replacements to petroleum-based plastic products.

Heterogeneity benefits enzyme/MOF design. In this review, our perspective on the research challenges and future directions for biocatalytic CO₂ conversion using MOF-based biocatalysts are discussed.

Binary DESPs and ternary DESPs are used for the separation of target compounds and as efficient adhesive materials.

We summarize the direct utilization of versatile waste sources in various electrocatalysis and energy storage systems in view of synthetic strategies, structural properties, electrochemical performance and the challenges and prospects.

Schematic illustration of interface/surface engineering strategies with various effective approaches for high-performance HER/OER electrocatalysts in seawater.

Catalytic production of several representative active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) from lignin.

The state-of-the-art of biocatalytic amide bond formation is discussed with the help of a manually curated database of enzymatic amidation reactions.

The state-of-the-art salt-thermal method to recycle spent LIBs enables preferential Li recovery, recovery of anode/cathode material, direct regeneration of degraded anode/cathode material, and one-step re-synthesis of advanced functional materials.

Retrosynthesis is a tool initially developed to simplify the planning of the synthesis of organic molecules. With the progress of computer-aided synthesis design (CASD), its development will be predictive green and sustainable CASD.

The synthesis of ionic liquids can generate large amounts of waste and use toxic or expensive raw materials.

This review summarizes recent advances in S–N bond formation via electrochemistry from diverse sulfur and nitrogen sources to valuable sulfur–nitrogen-bond-containing compounds, such as sulfenamides, sulfinamides, sulfonamides, sulfoximines, isothiazoles and thiadiazoles.

The substitution of phenol by lignin not only reduces the feedstock cost of resin synthesis but also improves the resin's physicochemical properties and endues the resin with new functions.

The article discusses the potential production processes for glucaric acid, and the efforts to develop more sustainable oxidation practices for its production, with a focus on the strengths and weaknesses of each method.

This review aims to introduce the rich applications of chemical toxicological data for environmental risk assessment and green chemical design by illustrating referable examples or cases. Further, we present a comprehensive toxicology databank.

In the application of electrolytic water splitting, MXenes can achieve performance optimization by doping, surface functional group regulation, construction of defect/vacancy, 3D/porous structure, or compounding with other materials.

This is the first review that emphasizes the engineering of carbon nitride-based catalysts for thermal, electrochemical, and photoelectrochemical CO oxidation reactions experimentally and theoretically.

The latest design and development of thermal-catalytic strategies are sorted based on the active species and types of catalysts. The ongoing challenge and opportunities have been concluded.

Addressing the CO₂ challenge is mandatory for the well-being of Earth's ecosystem and humanity. CO₂ catalytic hydrogenation is a suitable solution.

The review teach the reader how the use of an unconventional polymerization medium not only as scientific fantasy designed to validate an established concept but also as a viable tool for the sustainable development of macromolecular chemistry.

This review evaluates the current state of sustainable polymers in additive manufacturing with a focus on higher performance capabilities.

Immobilized chitinase, β-N-acetylglucosaminidases, chitin deacetylases and chitosanases enable ecofriendly enzymic conversion of chitin and its derivative, chitosan, into low-molecular weight sugars known as chitooligosaccharides (COSs).

We present a detailed review on the mechanistic understanding and catalyst development of CeO₂-based CO₂ methanation catalysts. Current challenges for deeper investigations and future perspectives are presented as well.

Fully-renewable green composites are accessible when natural fibers are dispersed in a non-petroleum sourced polymeric matrix, which show promise for more sustainable composite materials and demand further research to expand their use.