Themed collection 2020 Inorganic Chemistry Frontiers Review-type Articles

A rhombicuboctahedral C₆₀@Cu₂₄ core–shell structure, a giant leap toward the Holy Grail of a coordination saturated buckyball (C₆₀) of a C₆₀@M₃₀ icosidodecahedron, was highlighted.

Research progress of MOF-derived metal oxides and composites in lithium ion batteries has been presented based on different organic linkers.

This review concentrates on the interface issues of g-C₃N₄-based photocatalysts, including methods for constructing interfaces, techniques for identifying interfaces, and the types and roles of the as-developed interfaces.

Combined with bond traits, such as ionicity, susceptibility and lattice energy obtained via P–V–L bond theory, and far-infrared reflectance spectroscopy, intrinsic structural effects on microwave dielectric properties can be specifically evaluated.

This review focuses on recent developments in the design and synthesis of luminescence MOFs for monitoring antibiotics.

Polyoxometalates (POMs) are a kind of inorganic cluster metal complex with various biological activities, such as anti-Alzheimer's disease, antibacterial, anti-cancer, anti-diabetes, anti-virus and so on.

In this review, we summarize the nanostructural engineering and applications of rare earth oxide-based nanomaterials with well-defined compositions, crystal phases and shapes for efficiently catalyzing C1 chemical reactions.

Adaptable strategies for the design of superactive NiFe-LDH/graphene nanocomposites for high-performance catalytic activity towards electrocatalytic, photoelectrocatalytic, and photocatalytic water splitting have been reviewed.

We focus on the recent advances in non-noble metal catalyst design, synthesis and applications in dehydrogenation of chemical hydrides (e.g. NaBH₄, NH₃BH₃, NH₃, N₂H₄, N₂H₄BH₃) due to their high hydrogen contents and CO-free H₂ production.

Nanocrystals with low size distribution are able to self-assemble into a 3D crystalline structure called colloidal crystals or super/supracrystals.

The preparation strategies, structures, proton conductivity, conducting mechanism, application prospects and future research trends of zirconium-based MOFs are reviewed and highlighted.

Ligand-unsupported argentophilic interactions are described, emphasizing reticular design and recent developments in advanced synthetic strategies, and highlighting diverse interactions that are useful for the construction of unmitigated networks.

This review discusses the fundamentals and design strategies for the development of thermo-responsive metal–ligand coordination materials and the applications of these materials in temperature sensing, bioimaging, information security, etc.

The magnetic relaxation of lanthanide single-molecule magnets (Ln-SMMs) can be modulated reversibly by external stimuli including light irradiation, thermal treatment, protonation/deprotonation and oxidation/reduction etc.

Solution chemistry allows the crystallisation of range of iron oxides, including MFe₂O₄ spinels, MFeO₃ perovskites and hexaferrites, such as BaFe₁₂O₁₉, with nanoscale crystallinity and properties suitable for fields such as catalysis and electronics.

This review covers important advances in the field of substituted cucurbit[n]urils.

After a simple classification of inorganic materials synthesized at high-temperature and high-pressure, this tutorial reviews the important research results in the field of high-temperature and high-pressure inorganic synthesis in the past 5 years.

Recent progress in growth of bulk black phosphorus single crystal by CVT method has been briefly reviewed with the emphasis on reaction system, nucleation and growth mechanism as well as advancement in growth of doped BP bulk single crystal.

In this review, the recent advances in the shaping of MOFs are overviewed, and some promising strategies recently developed are highlighted, including templated shaping, self-shaping, shaping on substrates, and shaping with sacrificial materials.

The perovskite family is comprised of a great number of members because of the possible and flexible substitution of numerous ions in its system.

In this review, we summarize the separation mechanisms and materials adopted for the fabrication of 2D material membranes as well as their applications in critical separations.

The fundamental photophysics of cyclometalated Ir(III) complexes and surveys design strategies for efficient blue phosphorescent Ir(III) complexes are summarised.

This review summarizes structural features and recent synthesis methods of structurally ordered intermetallic borides, and the theoretical–experimental advances in the emerging boride-catalyzed reactions.

Halogenoantimonates(III) and halogenobismuthates(III) are a highly versatile class of organic–inorganic hybrid materials, applicable in optoelectronics and switchable dielectric devices.

This review aims to provide an overview regarding the development of luminescent metal–organic frameworks (LMOFs) based sensory materials for the detection of cationic inorganic and organic water pollutants.

The review highlights low temperature activation processes for high performance n-type metal oxide semiconductors for TFTs.

In this review, our goal is comparison of advantageous and disadvantageous of MOFs about signal-transduction in different instrumental methods for detection of different categories of organic analytes.

Proline based ligands show versatile functionality to construct chiral MOFs and COFs; meanwhile, the resulted frameworks are potential materials for enantioselective adsorption and asymmetric catalysis.

The recent developments and prospects of fluorosensors with a handful of recent examples based on mixed ligand Zn(II)/Cd(II) coordination polymers for aqueous phase detection of organic as well as inorganic pollutants have been discussed.

This review focuses on recent progress in the development of Yb-based upconversion nanoparticles and their emerging technological applications.

Nonlinear optical crystals with various inorganic planar π-conjugated groups are reviewed based on their bandgaps.

Photocatalysis (PC) technology has received global attention due to its high potential of addressing both environmental and energy issues using only solar light as energy input.

Recent progress on MOF-derived materials, including carbon and metal oxides/sulfides/selenides/phosphides, as anode materials for sodium-ion batteries is summarized.

Highly photoactive MOFs can be engineered via various strategies for the purpose of extended visible light absorption, more efficient generation, separation and transfer of charge carriers, as well as good recyclability.

The recent developments and prospects of near-infrared molecular probes based on luminescent lanthanide coordination complexes in bioimaging are described, which is important to emphasise the importance of lanthanide chemical biology.

This review comments on the homogeneous HER mechanisms for catalysts carrying S-non-innocent ligands in the light of experimental and computational data.

Post-synthetic modification methods for the secondary building units in MOFs facilitate unique structures and properties that are impossible to access via direct syntheses, which can be classified as four categories.

This review reports some recent advances in pyrolytic carbon as an ORR catalyst and explores its structure–activity relationship.