Ultrafast materials synthesis and manufacturing techniques for emerging energy and environmental applications.

Energy and environmental issues have attracted increasing attention globally, where sustainability and low-carbon emissions are seriously considered and widely accepted by government officials. In response to this situation, the development of renewable energy and environmental technologies is urgently needed to complement the usage of traditional fossil fuels. While a big part of advancement in these technologies relies on materials innovations, new materials discovery is limited by sluggish conventional materials synthesis methods, greatly hindering the advancement of related technologies. To address this issue, this review introduces and comprehensively summarizes emerging ultrafast materials synthesis methods that could synthesize materials in times as short as nanoseconds, significantly improving research efficiency. We discuss the unique advantages of these methods, followed by how they benefit individual applications for renewable energy and the environment. We also highlight the scalability of ultrafast manufacturing towards their potential industrial utilization. Finally, we provide our perspectives on challenges and opportunities for the future development of ultrafast synthesis and manufacturing technologies. We anticipate that fertile opportunities exist not only for energy and the environment but also for many other applications.

Enantioselective room temperature phosphorescence detection of non-phosphorescent analytes based on interaction with beta-cyclodextrin/1-bromonaphthalene complexes.

Menthol (MT) induces strong room temperature phosphorescence (RTP) of 1-bromonaphthalene (1BrN) in aqueous beta-cyclodextrin (beta-CD) suspensions, even under non-deoxygenated conditions. Interestingly, (-)-MT and (+)-MT enantiomers give rise to different phosphorescence intensities, the difference being 19+/-3%. It is argued that the signal can be mainly ascribed to the formation of ternary complexes beta-CD/1BrN/MT which show different RTP lifetimes, i.e. 4.28+/-0.06 and 3.71+/-0.06ms for (-)-MT and (+)-MT, respectively. Most probably, the stereochemical structure of (-)-MT provides a better protection of 1BrN against quenching by oxygen than (+)-MT. This interpretation is in line with the observation that under deoxygenated conditions the phosphorescence intensity difference for the two complexes becomes very small, i.e. only about 4%. The lifetime difference under aerated conditions enables the direct determination of the MT stereochemistry. For mixtures, in view of the 0.06ms uncertainty in the lifetime, enantiomeric purity can be determined down to 10%. Furthermore, in the case of MT the concentration of the least abundant enantiomer should be at least 3x10(-4)M, since otherwise complex dissociation would obscure the lifetime difference.