Polydiacetylene (PDA) inserted in films or in vesicles has received increasing attention due to its property to undergo a blue-to-red colorimetric transition along with a change from non-fluorescent to fluorescent upon application of various stimuli. In this review paper, the principle for the detection of various microorganisms (bacteria, directly detected or detected through the emitted toxins or through their DNA, and viruses) and of antibacterial and antiviral peptides based on these responsive PDA vesicles are detailed. The analytical performances obtained, when vesicles are in suspension or immobilized, are given and compared to those of the responsive vesicles mainly based on the vesicle encapsulation method. Many future challenges are then discussed.

Fluorination of the TiO₂ surface has been often reported as a tool to increase the photocatalytic efficiency due to the beneficial effects in terms of production of oxidizing radicals. Moreover, it is shown that the unique amphiphilic properties of the fluorinated TiO₂ (TiO₂-F) surface allow one to use this material as a stabilizer for the formulation of Pickering emulsions of poorly soluble pollutants such as nitrobenzene (NB) in water. The emulsions have been characterized in terms of size of the droplets, type of emulsion, possibility of phase inversion, contact angle measurements, and optical microscopy. The emulsified system presents micrometer-sized droplets of pollutant surrounded by the TiO₂-F photocatalyst. Consequently, the system can be considered to be composed of microreactors for the degradation of the pollutant, which maximize the contact area between the photocatalyst and substrate. The enhanced photocatalytic activity of TiO₂-F was confirmed in the present paper as the apparent rate constants of NB photodegradation were 16 × 10^–3 and 12 × 10^–3 min^–1 for fluorinated and bare TiO₂, respectively. At NB concentrations largely exceeding its solubility, the rate constant was 0.04 × 10^–3 min^–1 in the presence of both TiO₂ and TiO₂-F. However, unlike TiO₂, TiO₂-F stabilized NB/water emulsions and, under these conditions, the efficiency of NB photocatalytic degradation in the emulsified system was ca. 18 times higher than in the nonemulsified one. This result is relevant also in terms of practical applications because it opens the route to one-pot treatments of biphasic polluted streams without the need of preliminary physical separation treatments.