The confluence of pervasiveness, bioaccumulation, and toxicity in freshwater contaminants presents an environmental threat second to none. Exemplifying this trifecta, per‐ and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) present an alarming hazard among the emerging contaminants. State‐of‐the‐art PFAS adsorbents used in drinking water treatment, namely, activated carbons and ion‐exchange resins, are handicapped by low adsorption capacity, competitive adsorption, and/or slow kinetics. To overcome these shortcomings, metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) with tailored pore size, surface, and pore chemistry are promising alternatives. Thanks to the compositional modularity of MOFs and polymer–MOF composites, herein we report on a series of water‐stable zirconium carboxylate MOFs and their low‐cost polymer‐grafted composites as C ₈ –PFAS adsorbents with benchmark kinetics and “parts per billion” removal efficiencies. Bespoke insights into the structure–function relationships of PFAS adsorbents are obtained by leveraging interfacial design principles on solid sorbents, creating a synergy between the extrinsic particle surfaces and intrinsic molecular building blocks.

The range of possible nanostructures is so large and continuously growing, that collating and unifying the knowledge connected to them, including their biological activity, is a major challenge.

Everywhere in our surroundings we increasingly come in contact with nanostructures that have distinctive complex shape features on a scale comparable to the particle itself. Such shape ensembles can be made by modern nano-synthetic methods and many industrial processes. With the ever growing universe of nanoscale shapes, names such as “nanoflowers” and “nanostars” no longer precisely describe or characterise the distinct nature of the particles. Here we capture and digitise particle shape information on the relevant size scale and create a condensed representation in which the essential shape features can be captured, recognized and correlated. We find the natural emergence of intrinsic shape groups as well-defined ensemble distributions and show how these may be analyzed and interpreted to reveal novel aspects of our nanoscale shape environment. We show how these ideas may be applied to the interaction between the nanoscale-shape and the living universe and provide a conceptual framework for the study of nanoscale shape biological recognition and identity.

Here, we show that the development of nuclei and subsequent growth of a molecular organic crystal system can be induced by electron beam irradiation by exploiting the radiation chemistry of the carrier solvent.