The novel coronavirus disease(COVID-19) is a highly contagious pneumonia that has swept the world since December 2019. It has a huge negative impact on the global society, economy and life, which also seriously threatens people’s lives. Since there are no specific drugs or vaccines against COVID-19, rapid and timely detection and diagnosis are essential for controlling the epidemic. This article reviews the current detection methods for COVID-19. It mainly compares the function of computed tomography-based, nucleic acid-based and antibody-based methods for the detection of COVID-19, summarizes the advantages and weaknesses, and reviews recent research progress. Virus isolation is the gold standard for detecting viral infections but requires strict conditions that most laboratories and hospitals cannot reach; CT examination allow us directly see the symptoms but with a limitation of low specificity; nucleic acid testing provides direct evidence and is currently the main method for COVID-19 but have a false-negative rate; antibody testing is indirect evidence and adapt to carry out screening work, but it cannot be used in the early stage of infection and may get false-positive and false-negative results. Joint use and comprehensive interpretation are proposed to be complementary in terms of technology and time difference, which will play an important role in identifying patients, monitoring disease progress and investigating epidemiology. The future development, research priorities and challenges are addressed.

Optical technology plays a vital role in the field of biomedicine. It not only enables visualization of physiological or pathological processes at the cellular and subcellular dimensions in living subjects, but also improves the specificity and sensitivity of disease treatment. However, ordinary optical technology faces many challenges, including relatively low tissue penetration depth, low signal-to-noise ratio, and autofluorescence of the tissue. To overcome these problems, many researchers have gradually begun to focus on self-luminous technologies, including chemiluminescence, bioluminescence, and Cherenkov luminescence. Among them, chemiluminescence(CL) is a kind of light radiation phenomenon, which is produced by chemical substances in the process of chemical reactions. It has many advantages, including high sensitivity, no need for external light source excitation, breaking through the limit of tissue penetration depth, and improving the signal-to-noise ratio. These characteristics provide new ideas for the further development of optical imaging and treatment technology. However, due to the hydrophobicity of the chemiluminescent substance and other problems, its application in the field of biomedicine has been limited. To solve these problems, researchers have begun to combine nanotechnology with chemiluminescence technology, which not only expands the application range of chemiluminescence, but also further promotes the diagnosis and treatment of diseases. On this basis, the article first analyzes the molecular mechanism of chemiluminescence, secondly summarizes the application of chemiluminescence in the diagnosis and treatment of inflammation and tumor, and discusses the problems encountered in practical applications and the future development direction.

The application of Gd-based contrast agent is widely broad for magnetic resonance imaging in clinic diagnosis. However, the toxicity of Gd-based contrast agent still cannot be ignored. Therefore, most researchers have made a great effort to find low toxic contrast agent. Iron oxide nanoparticles(IONP) have a great dark contrast effects in magnetic resonance imaging(MRI) due to their superparamagnetic properties, and they also have good biocompatibility. With the rapid development of biomaterials and molecular image technology, the application of IONP in MRI has become more and more broad. In recent years, IONP has made great progress in dual-modal imaging. What’s more, IONP is not only used to clinical diagnosis, but also in treatment. It offers some new strategies for the treatment of disease. Based on the magnetic resonance imaging mechanism and preparation, surface modification of IONP, this review elaborates the research progress of IONP in magnetic resonance imaging in recent years.

Supported ionic liquid is a new kind of solid materials prepared by loading ionic liquids onto different carriers through physical adsorption or chemical bonding, which has the characteristics of both ionic liquids and carriers. This process can significantly improve the utilization of ionic liquids, solve the problems of high viscosity, mass transfer and separation of ionic liquids, and expand the application field of ionic liquids. This paper reviews the research progress and application of supported ionic liquids in recent years, summarizes the advantages and disadvantages of different carriers and some problems existing in the current application. Furthermore, the prospect to the development and application of supported ionic liquids is also discussed.

Under the background of limited petroleum reserves, the conversion of renewable biomass to valuable chemicals is undoubtedly an effective strategy to alleviate the current and future resource crisis. The green chemical industry based on biomass platform molecules is gradually replacing traditional petroleum chemistry. The value-added 2,5-furandicarboxylic acid(FDCA) fabricated from the selective oxidation of the bio-based 5-hydroxymethylfurfural(HMF) is considered as an important monomer in green polymer production, such as polyethylene 2,5-furandicarboxylate(PEF). The production of FDCA from HMF generally involves thermal-, electro-, photo-, and bio-catalytic methods. Thermocatalysis is prized for the high yield and purity of FDCA but suffers from the harsh conditions, limiting its application in industry. Electrocatalysis and photocatalysis become promising for HMF conversion to FDCA due to the effective utilization of electric and solar energy to generate abundant reactive species for oxidation. In addition, the biocatalytic processes produce FDCA under mild conditions with high selectivity, which is an important development direction utilizing the biomass resources effectively in the future, although the productivity is unsatisfied at this stage. In this review, we discuss various oxidation routes and the corresponding chemical mechanisms and comprehensively review the current progress on the production of FDCA from HMF, focusing on its development and challenges. Finally, we envisage the future of selective catalytic oxidation of HMF, which might be helpful for the researchers.

In recent years, both industry and academia have been focusing their attention toward the development of sustainable natural fiber composites. Basalt fiber(BF) is a kind of green, environmentally friendly natural high-performance inorganic fiber, which has the advantages of high strength, high modulus, high temperature resistance, acid and alkali resistance, heat and sound insulation, good thermal vibration stability, excellent dielectric properties, and low cost. And the basalt fiber reinforced polymer(BFRP) composites are widely used in aircraft, automobiles, ships, construction, petrochemical pipelines, and wind turbine blades, due to their excellent mechanical properties and designability. However, the poor compatibility between BF and polymer matrix leads to many defects and deficiencies in BFRP composites, and the insufficient interface strength and the fragile interface phase have been the bottlenecks restricting the development of basalt fiber reinforced resin-based composites. Therefore, various physical or chemical treatment methods have been developed to treat BF surface by investigators in order to enhance the interface interaction between BF and resins, thus improving the interface binding capacity of BFRP composites. The main research directions about BFRP composites and several common mechanisms of composite interface interaction are introduced. Furthermore, the research work on the interface reinforcement of BFRP composites in recent years is reviewed in detail. Finally, current problems and future perspectives are discussed.

Uranium is an important raw material in the nuclear industry. Besides, uranium is a heavy metal with higher chemical and biological toxicity. Therefore, it is of great scientific and practical significance to efficiently separate and recover uranium from various uranium-containing aqueous systems for alleviating the shortage of uranium resources, and protecting human health and ecological environment safety. In the review, all kinds of representative solid phase extractants developed in the recent 15 years for uranium separation and recovery are briefly summarized, and the prospect and potential research directions of the solid phase extractants are also introduced.

Stir bar sorptive extraction(SBSE) has been proposed about 20 years. It originates from solid phase microextraction, but has higher stationary phase volume, extraction capacity and extraction recovery. Stir bar sorptive extraction, as an efficient sample pretreatment method, is widely used for analytes enrichment in environmental samples, food samples, pharmaceutical samples and volatile substances. The core of the stir bar is the coating. Currently, there are commercial coatings, molecularly imprinted polymer coatings, and non-imprinted coatings. This paper introduces the basic principles of stir bar sorptive extraction. The development and application of various stir bar sorptive extraction coatings are systematically reviewed. Some novel stir bar sorptive extraction modes are also briefly introduced in this review. Finally, the development of stir bar sorptive extraction technology is summarized and prospected.

Electrically switched ion membrane(ESIM) separation is a novel ion selective separation and recovery technology developed in recent years. To date, the target ion species separated by using ESIM have involved various metal cations and anions. ESIM separation is originated from electrically switched ion exchange(ESIX) technology, whose highly efficient operation depends on the electroactive ion exchange material(EIXM) with unique ion exchange function. Reversible ion loading/unloading can be easily controlled by modulating the redox states of the EIXM with both electronic and ionic conductivity to perform the separation of target ions from mixed solution and regeneration of the matrix. Therefore, the secondary waste is eliminated due to that the chemical regeneration of the ion-exchange matrix is not necessary. This paper begins with a brief introduction of EIXM to the structure design and controllable preparation of membrane/film materials, then the research progress of various mechanisms of ESIX and the development and application of some novel ESIX-ESIM modules are outlined. The development course from intermittent operation of ESIX to electrically switched ion permselective membrane(ESIPM) based on the ESIX principle is summarized. It is necessary to emphasize the design and synthesis of novel structural ESIM materials and the development of the corresponding membrane modules focused on the selective separation of target ions, then finally the industrial application of ESIM could be realized.

In recent years, the development of high-performance fluorescent organic light-emitting devices(FOLEDs) has attracted extensive attention in both academic and industry research areas. Since only 25% electronically excited excitons can be used for electroluminescence, the external quantum efficiencies(EQEs) of conventional FOLEDs are generally less than 5%. In order to increase the exciton utilizing efficiency for enhanced performance of FOLEDs, the architecture of sensitized FOLEDs(SFOLEDs) are designed to harvest both singlet and triplet excitons by means of efficient energy transfer processes from the host or sensitizer to the fluorescent dopant. Great progress has been made in the efficiency enhancement of FOLEDs and the maximum EQE values of the reported SFOLEDs have reached 26.1% to date. This review intents to introduce the sensitization principles and working mechanisms of various SFOLEDs in detail. Also, the latest research progress on the device structures and performance are summarized and discussed for various SFOLEDs based on thermally activated delayed fluorescent(TADF) sensitization, exciplex sensitization, triplet exciton annihilation sensitization, and hybridized local and charge-transfer(HLCT) sensitization, etc. Finally, the future research directions of SFOLEDs are discussed to give an outlook of the prospect trends and future challenges. We hope that this review attracts more researchers with different disciplinary areas to devote themselves to this interesting research field.

Due to high radiation resistance, good temperature characteristics and stability at high temperature, photoelectrodes integrated by Ⅲ-Ⅴ semiconductor materials, such as GaAs, GaP and InP, show higher solar absorption efficiency and photoelectric conversion efficiency compared with photoelectrodes constructed from other materials. However, the physical and chemical properties of most Ⅲ-Ⅴ semiconductors in aqueous electrolytes are very unstable, resulting in a rapid degradation of solar-driven water splitting performance. The recent progress of protective layer films research in improving the electrochemical stability of Ⅲ-Ⅴ semiconductor photoelectrodes are reviewed. In order to obtain a stable and efficient photoelectric reaction interface and the water splitting efficiency, the reasons of material attenuation and corresponding improvement methods have been highlighted. In addition, the future development of thin-layer protection strategies to obtain more efficient solar-driven water splitting devices based on Ⅲ-Ⅴ semiconductors have been prospected.

Since the 1970s, the use of sunlight to split water to convert solar energy into clean and renewable hydrogen fuel has become the focus of attention. Solar energy is an inexhaustible energy, and seawater is the most abundant and readily available natural resource on the earth. The use of photoelectrocatalytic seawater splitting to produce hydrogen has become one of the ideal ways to solve the actual energy problem and alleviate the shortage of fresh water resources. This review summarizes the research work that has been explored so far for hydrogen evolution by photoelectrocatalytic seawater splitting, combs the research content and mechanisms, and prospects the field of photoelectrocatalytic seawater splitting.

Oxygen evolution reaction(OER) is a crucial half-reaction of energy storage and transfer technologies, such as water splitting, CO₂ reduction reaction, and rechargeable metal-air batteries. NiFe layered double hydroxide(NiFe-LDH) has been considered as one of the most promising OER catalysts due to its unique layered structure, high performance, and low cost. However, it is limited by the poor conductivity and insufficient exposure to active sites. Therefore, an efficient modification method can greatly improve the electrocatalytic performance of NiFe-LDH. In this review, several typical modification methods are reviewed in detail, including defects introducing, exfoliating, elements doping, surface decorating, and in-situ growing. These methods can develop the intrinsic activity of NiFe-LDH effectively by exposing more reactive sites, increasing the conductivity, and reducing the kinetic energy barrier. Finally, the challenges and opportunities about modifications of NiFe-LDH are discussed.

With its excellent theoretical performance (1675 mAh·g^-1 and 2600 Wh·kg^-1 based on S), low cost and environmental friendliness, Li-S batteries have become one of the most promising candidates for next generation rechargeable energy storage devices. However, the severe shuttling of lithium polysulfides results in the decrease of capacity and short life. In order to promote its commercial application, it is the key point to suppress the shuttling effect. The commercial separator has a large pore size up to about 500 nm, and is ineffective in suppressing the migration of soluble lithium polysulfides. Hence, it is an effective strategy to introduce the functional modification layer to the separator. This article reviews the principles for surface modification of separator and the newly developed separator based on the principle. Moreover, the prospect of separator modification in improving Li-S batteries is prospected.

With dual attributes of pollutant and resources, sewage sludge(SS) is the byproduct from wastewater treatment plant, which belongs to typical urban solid waste. The use of SS as raw materials for the synthesis of carbon-based catalysts and their application in water environment catalysis is an implement of sludge reduction and resource reutilization. As SS is a mixture of organic matter from biomass and various inorganic oxides and metal ions, the carbon-based catalyst or carrier prepared from SS has the properties of easy availability of raw materials, strong dispersibility of active components on the carrier, easy adjustment of surface chemical functional groups, and high specific surface area. It is widely used in the field of multiphase Fenton reaction, electrochemical catalytic oxidation, complex photocatalytic reaction, catalytic wet oxidation and catalytic ozonation. This paper will describe the preparation and modification methods of sludge carbon-based catalyst materials. In addition, the mechanism, which carbon-based catalysts participate in pollutant adsorption, electron transfer, and organic degradation in water, is explained by the structure-activity relationship between physico-chemical properties of materials and catalytic action, combined with its application characteristics in the field of water environment catalysis. At the same time, a new prospect is put forward to improve the stability, reusability and catalytic activity of sludge-based materials.

Due to the rapid development of industry and agriculture worldwide, water pollution has become the most important crisis facing humanity. Semiconductor-based photocatalytic method is one of the green technologies for controlling water pollution, which can effectively degrade and remove pollutants in water. The widespread use of metal oxide semiconductors in numerous photocatalytic materials, which stems from their salient features such as low toxicity, high stability, and resistance to chemical corrosion in aqueous solution. Among these, ternary metal oxides have surpassed other metal oxides in terms of photocatalytic activity under visible-light irradiation due to their reduced band gaps. This article systematically describes two typical ternary metal oxides-bismuth tungstate and bismuth molybdate. The preparation as well as the application and development of composite catalysts based on bismuth tungstate and bismuth molybdate in the field of photocatalytic degradation wastewater treatment are reviewed. The main problems in the design, mechanism research and modification methods of the composite materials on bismuth tungstate and bismuth molybdate are proposed, and the future development trend is prospected.