2021, Kutuzova, Anastasiya, Dontsova, Tetiana, Kwapinski, Witold

The extensive application of antibiotics in human and veterinary medicine has led to their widespread occurrence in a natural aquatic environment. Global health crisis is associated with the fast development of antimicrobial resistance, as more and more infectious diseases cannot be treated more than once. Sulfamethoxazole, trimethoprim and ciprofloxacin are the most commonly detected antibiotics in water systems worldwide. The persistent and toxic nature of these antibiotics makes their elimination by conventional treatment methods at wastewater treatment plants almost impossible. The application of advanced oxidation processes and heterogeneous photocatalysis over TiO2‐based materials is a promising solution. This highly efficient technology has the potential to be sustainable, cost‐efficient and energy‐efficient. A comprehensive review on the application of various TiO2‐based photocatalysts for the degradation of sulfamethoxazole, trimethoprim and ciprofloxacin is focused on highlighting their photocatalytic performance under various reaction conditions (different amounts of pollutant and photocatalyst, pH, light source, reaction media, presence of inorganic ions, natural organic matter, oxidants). Mineralization efficiency and ecotoxicity of final products have been also considered. Further research needs have been presented based on the literature findings. Among them, design and development of highly efficient under sunlight, stable, recyclable and cost‐effective TiO2‐based materials; usage of real wastewaters for photocata-lytic tests; and compulsory assessment of products ecotoxicity are the most important research tasks in order to meet requirements for industrial application. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

2022, Hou, Lili, Larsson, Wera, Hecht, Stefan, Andréasson, Joakim, Albinsson, Bo

Coupling semiconducting nanocrystals (NCs) with organic molecules provides an efficient route to generate and transfer triplet excitons. These excitons can be used to power photochemical transformations such as photoisomerization reactions using low energy radiation. Thus, it is desirable to develop a general approach that can efficiently be used to control photoswitches using all-visible-light aiming at future applications in life- and materials sciences. Here, we demonstrate a simple ‘cocktail’ strategy that can achieve all-visible-light switchable diarylethenes (DAEs) through triplet energy transfer from the hybrid of CdS NCs and phenanthrene-3-carboxylic acid, with high photoisomerization efficiency and improved fatigue resistance. The size-tunable excitation energies of CdS NCs make it possible to precisely match the clear spectral window of the relevant DAE photoswitch. We demonstrate reversible all-visible-light photoisomerization of a series of DAE derivatives both in the liquid and solid state, even in the presence of oxygen. Our general strategy is promising for fabrication of all-visible-light activated optoelectronic devices as well as memories, and should in principle be adaptable to photopharmacology.