A series of Lewis acidic metal salts were used for glucose dehydration to 5-hydroymethylfurfural (HMF) in water. Effect of valence state, ionic radii of Lewis acidic cation, and the type of anions on the catalytic performance have been studied systematically. The experimental results showed that the valence state played an important role in determining catalytic activity and selectivity. It was found that a higher glucose conversion rate and HMF selectivity could be obtained over high valent Lewis acid salts, where the ionic radii of these Lewis acidic metal salts are usually relatively small. Analysis on the effect of the anions of Lewis acid salts on the catalytic activity and the selectivity suggested that a higher glucose conversion and HMF selectivity could be readily obtained with Cl⁻. Furthermore, the recyclability of high valence state Lewis acid salt was also studied, however, inferior catalytic performance was observed. The deactivation mechanism was speculated to be the fact that high valence state Lewis acid salt was comparatively easier to undergo hydrolysis to yield complicated metal aqua ions with less catalytic activity. The Lewis acidic activity could be recovered by introducing a stoichiometric amount of hydrochloric acid (HCl) to the catalytic before the reaction.

Surfaces with a controlled gradient of polymer brushes were fabricated via microfluidically mediated atom-transfer radical polymerization (ATRP). This methodology used a sealed sandwiched setup with a parallel alignment of the initiator-substrate with the metal substrate. A syringe-pump injected small volumes of Cu(I)/L activator/monomer solution directly into the bottom of the setup while ATRP at the frontal initiator-substrate was simultaneously initiated. The trace amount of injection solution locally confined polymerization to occur only on areas in contact with the solution which resulted in the spontaneous formation of gradient structures. A surface-attached polymer gradient was regulated via either the solution injection rate or monomer/catalysis concentration, thereby yielding a controllable gradient with uniformly grafted polymers.

Breaking the symmetric structure of active centers to adjust their electronic structure is a promising strategy for improving the performance of single‐atom catalysts (SACs) in electrocatalytic carbon dioxide (CO ₂ ) reduction (ECR). However, it remains highly challenging to achieve precise regulation and fine‐tuning of single‐atom sites at the atomic level. Here, by introducing S and Cl atoms, a Zn‐SAC (ZnN ₃ S ₁ Cl/C) with coupled axial and asymmetric coordination is successfully constructed, thereby enhancing the ECR performance. In situ attenuated total reflection infrared spectroscopy demonstrates that ZnN ₃ S ₁ Cl/C promotes the formation of ^* COOH and the desorption of ^* CO species. Theoretical calculations show that the asymmetric coordination of S and the axial coordination of Cl can lead to the electron redistribution near the single Zn sites, increasing the overlap between the Zn (3d) and ^* COOH (2p) orbitals. This enhances the adsorption strength of ^* COOH on the Zn site and reduces the desorption energy of ^* CO, thus facilitating catalytic performance. Therefore, the ZnN ₃ S ₁ Cl/C catalyst achieves a CO faradaic efficiency of ≈100% in an H‐cell, with excellent long‐term stability of 240 h. This work may pave the way for the development of efficient ECR catalysts via fine manipulation of asymmetric and electronic structures of single‐atom metal sites.

Pb₂Mg(PO₄)₂, Pb₄Zn₈(PO₄)₈and α-BaZn₂(PO₄)₂have been synthesized by the standard solid-state reaction and their structures were reported for the first time.

In this work, a heterogeneous catalytic system consisting of [HO₂CMMIm]Cl and ZrOCl₂ in isopropanol is demonstrated to be effective for 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) synthesis with glucose as the feedstock. Various reaction conditions for HMF synthesis by glucose dehydration were investigated systematically. Under optimized reaction conditions, as high as 43 mol% HMF yield could be achieved. Increasing the water content to a level below 3.17% led to the production of HMF with a higher yield, while a lower HMF yield was observed when the water content was increased above 3.17%. In addition, the data also showed that ZrOCl₂ could not only effectively convert glucose into intermediate species (which were not fructose, in contrast to the literature) but also catalyze the intermediate species’ in situ dehydration into HMF. [HO₂CMMIm]Cl was used to catalyze the intermediate species’ in situ conversion to HMF. The kinetics data showed that a temperature increase accelerated the intermediate species’ dehydration reaction rate. The reaction of glucose dehydration was a strong endothermal reaction.