Zinc oxide (ZnO) has been considered as one of the potential materials in solar cell applications, owing to its relatively high conductivity, electron mobility, stability against photo-corrosion and availability at low-cost.

Inorganic scintillators play a major role in ionizing radiation detection due to their high versatility to detect multiple radiation sources such as X-rays, gamma-rays, alpha, beta, and neutron particles, and their fast and high light yield, making them especially convenient for imaging, spectroscopy, and timing applications. Scintillators-based detection systems are found, among various applications, in medical imaging, homeland security, high-energy physics, industrial control, oil drilling explorations, and energy management. This Review discusses advances and prospects of perovskite scintillators, particularly low-dimensional hybrid organic-inorganic perovskite crystals and all-inorganic perovskite nanocrystals. We highlight the promise of two-dimensional lithium-doped (PEA)₂PbBr₄ crystals and CsPbBr₃ nanocrystals as scintillators with high light yields, exceeding 20 photons/keV, and fast decay times of less than 15 ns. Such a combination may result in fast-spectral X-ray imaging, an output count rate exceeding 30 Mcps/pixel in photon-counting computed tomography, and coincidence timing resolution of less than 100 ps in positron emission tomography. We review recent strategies to further improve light yield, decay time, and coincidence timing resolution through light-matter interactions such as extraction efficiency enhancement and Purcell-enhanced scintillators. These advancements in light yields and decay times of perovskite scintillators will be particularly useful in the medical and security applications.

The practice of combining external stimulation therapy alongside stimuli-responsive bio-scaffolds has shown massive potential for tissue engineering applications. One promising example is the combination of electrical stimulation (ES) and electroactive scaffolds because ES could enhance cell adhesion and proliferation as well as modulating cellular specialization. Even though electroactive scaffolds have the potential to revolutionize the field of tissue engineering due to their ability to distribute ES directly to the target tissues, the development of effective electroactive scaffolds with specific properties remains a major issue in their practical uses. Conductive polymers (CPs) offer ease of modification that allows for tailoring the scaffold’s various properties, making them an attractive option for conductive component in electroactive scaffolds. This review provides an up-to-date narrative of the progress of CPs-based electroactive scaffolds and the challenge of their use in various tissue engineering applications from biomaterials perspectives. The general issues with CP-based scaffolds relevant to its application as electroactive scaffolds were discussed, followed by a more specific discussion in their applications for specific tissues, including bone, nerve, skin, skeletal muscle and cardiac muscle scaffolds. Furthermore, this review also highlighted the importance of the manufacturing process relative to the scaffold’s performance, with particular emphasis on additive manufacturing, and various strategies to overcome the CPs’ limitations in the development of electroactive scaffolds.

The accumulation of pollutants in water is dangerous for the environment and human lives. Some of them are considered as persistent organic pollutants (POPs) that cannot be eliminated from wastewater effluent. Thus, many researchers have devoted their efforts to improving the existing technology or providing an alternative strategy to solve this environmental problem. One of the attractive materials for this purpose are metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) due to their superior high surface area, high porosity, and the tunable features of their structures and function. This review provides an up-to-date and comprehensive description of MOFs and their crucial role as adsorbent, catalyst, and membrane in wastewater treatment. This study also highlighted several strategies to improve their capability to remove pollutants from water effluent.

Electroactive biomaterials are fascinating for tissue engineering applications because of their ability to deliver electrical stimulation directly to cells, tissue, and organs. One particularly attractive conductive filler for electroactive biomaterials is silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) because of their high conductivity, antibacterial activity, and ability to promote bone healing. However, production of AgNPs involves a toxic reducing agent which would inhibit biological scaffold performance. This work explores facile and green synthesis of AgNPs using extract of Cilembu sweet potato and studies the effect of baking and precursor concentrations (1, 10 and 100 mM) on AgNPs’ properties. Transmission electron microscope (TEM) results revealed that the smallest particle size of AgNPs (9.95 ± 3.69 nm) with nodular morphology was obtained by utilization of baked extract and ten mM AgNO₃. Polycaprolactone (PCL)/AgNPs scaffolds exhibited several enhancements compared to PCL scaffolds. Compressive strength was six times greater (3.88 ± 0.42 MPa), more hydrophilic (contact angle of 76.8 ± 1.7°), conductive (2.3 ± 0.5 × 10⁻³ S/cm) and exhibited anti-bacterial properties against Staphylococcus aureus ATCC3658 (99.5% reduction of surviving bacteria). Despite the promising results, further investigation on biological assessment is required to obtain comprehensive study of this scaffold. This green synthesis approach together with the use of 3D printing opens a new route to manufacture AgNPs-based electroactive with improved anti-bacterial properties without utilization of any toxic organic solvents.

Despite its commercial success as a primary battery, Zn-air battery is struggling to sustain a reasonable cycling performance mainly because of the lack of robust bifunctional electrocatalysts which smoothen the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) taking place on its air-cathode. Composites of carbon/manganese oxide have emerged as a potential solution with high catalytic performance; however, the use of non-renewable carbon sources with tedious and non-scalable synthetic methods notably compromised the merit of being low cost. In this work, high quantity of carbon is produced from renewable source of readily available table sugar by a facile room temperature dehydration process, on which manganese oxide nanorods are grown to yield an electrocatalyst of MnO_x@AC-S with high oxygen bifunctional catalytic activities. A Zn-air battery with the MnO_x@AC-S composite catalyst in its air-cathode delivers a peak power density of 116 mW cm⁻² and relatively stable cycling performance over 215 discharge and charge cycles. With decent performance and high synthetic yield achieved for the MnO_x@AC-S catalyst form a renewable source, this research sheds light on the advancement of low-cost yet efficient electrocatalyst for the industrialization of rechargeable Zn-air battery.