By taking advantage of typical dealloying and subsequent aging methods, a novel homogeneous porous brass with a micro/nano hierarchical structure was prepared without any chemical modification. The treatment of commercial brass with hot concentrated HCl solution caused preferential etching of Zn from Cu₆₂Zn₃₈ alloy foil, leaving a microporous skeleton with an average tortuous channel size of 1.6 μm for liquid transfer. After storage in the atmosphere for 7 days, the wettability of the dealloyed brass changed from superhydrophilic to superhydrophobic with a contact angle > 156° and sliding angle < 7°. The aging treatment enhanced the hydrophobicity of the brass by the formation of Cu₂O on the surface. By virtue of the opposite wettability to water and oil, the aged brass separated surfactant-stabilized water-in-oil emulsions with separation efficiency of over 99.4% and permeate flux of about 851 L·m⁻²·h⁻¹ even after recycling for 60 times. After 10 times of tape peeling or sandpaper abrasion, the aged brass maintained its superhydrophobicity, indicating its excellent mechanical stability. Moreover, the aged brass still retained its superhydrophobicity after exposure to high temperatures or corrosive solutions, displaying high resistance to extreme environments. The reason may be that the bicontinuous porous structure throughout the whole foil endows stable mechanical properties to tolerate extreme environments. This method should have a promising future in expanding the applications of alloys.

Submicrometre‐sized EuPO ₄ hollow spheres were synthesised by utilising the colloidal spheres of Eu(OH)CO ₃ as the sacrificial template, for the first time. The EuPO ₄ hollow spheres were investigated by X‐ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, and photoluminescence, respectively. The EuPO ₄ hollow spheres exhibit red colour emission from ⁵ D ₀ – ⁷ F _J ( J = 1, 2, 3, 4) transitions of the Eu ³⁺ ions. The obtained EuPO ₄ hollow spheres may have potential applications in cell biology, drug release, diagnosis, due to the high chemistry stability and luminescence function.

Developing new biomolecule–drug conjugates as prodrugs is a promising area for natural products and pharmaceutical chemistry. Herein, a cholesterol–doxorubicin (Chol-DOX) conjugate was synthesized using cholesteryl-4-nitrophenolate as a facile, stable, and controllable activated ester. This approach offers an alternative to the conventional HCl-emitting cholesteryl chloroformate method. Semi-empirical theoretical calculations showed that cholesteryl-4-nitrophenolate exhibits moderate reactivity, greater thermodynamic stability, a higher dipole moment, and a lower HOMO-LUMO energy gap compared to cholesteryl chloroformate, suggesting that cholesteryl-4-nitrophenolate could be used as a more controllable acylating agent. The structure of the synthesized Chol-DOX conjugate was characterized using NMR, MS, and FT-IR techniques. Biological properties of the Chol-DOX conjugate were analyzed with a comparison of theoretical and experimental data. This work provides a facile and controllable method to synthesize natural lipid–DOX prodrugs and offers an in-depth data analysis of the related biological properties.

Developing new biomolecule-drug conjugates as prodrugs is a promising area for natural products and pharmaceutical chemistry. Herein, a cholesterol-doxorubicin (Chol-DOX) conjugate was synthesized using cholesteryl-4-nitrophenolate as a facile, stable, and controllable activated ester. This approach offers an alternative to the conventional HCl-emitting cholesteryl chloroformate method, semi-empirical theoretical calculations showed that cholesteryl-4-nitrophenolate exhibits moderate reactivity, higher thermodynamic stability, and a lower HOMO-LUMO energy gap compared to cholesteryl chloroformate, suggesting cholesteryl-4-nitrophenolate could be used as a more controllable acylating agent. The structure of synthesized Chol-DOX conjugate was characterized using NMR and MS techniques. Biological properties of the Chol-DOX were analyzed with the comparison of theoretical and experimental data. This work provided a facile and controllable method to synthesize natural lipid-DOX prodrug and offered an in-depth data analysis of the related biological properties.