Researchers have recently focused on the advancement of new materials from biorenewable and sustainable sources because of great concerns about the environment, waste accumulation and destruction, and the inevitable depletion of fossil resources. Biorenewable materials have been extensively used as a matrix or reinforcement in many applications. In the development of innovative methods and materials, composites offer important advantages because of their excellent properties such as ease of fabrication, higher mechanical properties, high thermal stability, and many more. Especially, nanocomposites (obtained by using biorenewable sources) have significant advantages when compared to conventional composites. Nanocomposites have been utilized in many applications including food, biomedical, electroanalysis, energy storage, wastewater treatment, automotive, etc. This comprehensive review provides chemistry, structures, advanced applications, and recent developments about nanocomposites obtained from biorenewable sources. Copyright © 2020 American Chemical Society.

Ates B.

Koytepe S.

Ulu A.

Gurses C.

Thakur V.K.

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Shiv Nadar University

Chemical Reviews

In this work, 2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate cross-linked gum tragacanth hydrogel (GumT-cl-HEMA) was systematically synthesized to attain maximum swelling (396.9 \%) by simple microwave-assisted green polymerization technique. The prepared GumT-cl-HEMA hydrogel was further modified by using TiO2 nanoparticles to generate TiO2 loaded 2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate cross-linked gum tragacanth (GumT-cl-HEMA/TiO2) hydrogel composite. The GumT-cl-HEMA hydrogel and GumT-cl-HEMA/TiO2 hydrogel composite were characterized through XPS, BET, XRD, FTIR, TGA and SEM. The GumT-cl-HEMA hydrogel and GumT-cl-HEMA/TiO2 hydrogel composite were used to perform adsorption to separate the molecules of malachite green (MG) from water. Batch adsorption parameters were examined to analyze the pH effect, time effect and adsorbent dose for the adsorption of malachite green dye from aqueous solution. The inclusion of TiO2 particles inside the GumT-cl-HEMA hydrogel led to increased adsorption rates and stability. The adsorption was accurately followed the pseudo second order model and Langmuir isotherm model. The reported GumT-cl-HEMA/TiO2 hydrogel composite removal efficiency was 99.3 \% adsorbent dose = 90 mg, MG = 50 ppm, pH = 7, volume = 50 mL and time = 80 min). The synthesized samples were regenerated and then reused for five repeated adsorption-desorption cycles. The construction of GumT-cl-HEMA hydrogel and GumT-cl-HEMA/TiO2 hydrogel composite gives a facile scheme for efficient adsorbents. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd.

Journal of Environmental Chemical Engineering

Titania modified gum tragacanth based hydrogel nanocomposite for water remediation

Despite the adverse effects of microbial hazards on public health, major pharmaceutical firms have left the field of anti-infective development and a dramatic reduction in the number of researcher's intricated in the quest for new specific anti-infective leads. In the non-existence of an efficient forum for antibiotics development and over usage in human beings and animals, bacteria have demoralized this potential by gradually establishing the resistance toward most of the antibiotics used. Thus, the production of novel and successful anti-infective drugs is urgently required to combat this resistance. Hydrazones and hydrazides have mounted as a key-skeleton for the development of active drugs, due to their important biological and pharmacological profiles. Hydrazones are being manufactured as medicines by various investigators to fight against the ailments with maximal effects and minimal toxicity. This paper focuses on the outline of the literature results of recent years, incorporating the work on the anti-infective profile of hydrazone analogues. This review may also act as an excellent basis for the development of new derivatives of hydrazone as potential anti-infective mediators. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd

Materials Today Chemistry

Hydrazone comprising compounds as promising anti-infective agents: chemistry and structure-property relationship

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Nanomaterials

Nanocellulose and nanocarbons based hybrid materials: Synthesis, characterization and applications

Energy storage devices are one of the hot spots in recent years due to the environmental problems caused by the large consumption of unsustainable energy such as petroleum or coal. Capacitors are a common device for energy storage, especially electrical energy. A variety of types including electrolytic capacitors, mica capacitors, paper capacitors, ceramic capacitors, film capacitors, and non-polarized capacitors have been proposed. Their specific applications depend on their intrinsic properties. Dielectric capacitors have reasonable energy storage density, with current research focusing on the enhancement of energy density and making the materials more flexible as well as lightweight. Improvement strategies are based on the premise that use of two or more different materials (e.g. polymers and ceramics/metals) at an optimal formulation can result in properties that combine the advantages of the precursor materials. Different polymers especially fluoropolymers (e.g. PVDF and PVDF based co-polymer) are the main components in dielectric nanocomposites for capacitors with high energy storage performance. In this article, we have briefly summarized the recent advances in functional polymers nanocomposites for energy storage applications with a primary focus on polymers, surface engineering, functional groups and novel synthesis/manufacturing concepts applied to new materials. The article presents a unique integrated structure and approaches providing key knowledge for the design and development of novel, low-cost, multifunctional next-generation energy storage materials with improved efficiency. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd

Functional nanocomposites for energy storage: chemistry and new horizons

Sustainable functional polymer nanocomposites from renewable resources are extremely promising materials that can provide the next-generation of lightweight, multifunctional materials for several applications including energy storage, automotive, construction, defense, aerospace, consumer products, biomedical and functional coatings to name few. There is limited information on the use of sustainable polymers and graphene nanoplatelets (GNs), as well as the combinations of these two can provide reduced water permeability or enhanced electrical conductivity and improved thermal properties, and so on. Building upon this hypothesis, biobased poly(butylene succinate)/few-layer GN nanocomposites were prepared via a solventless melt-blending technique. Different characterization techniques such as differential scanning calorimetery, thermogravimetric analysis, dynamic mechanical analysis, dielectric spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD) and hot stage optical microscopy were used to study the thermal and structural characteristics. The melt blending was characterized by torque and temperature curves which showed that torque was reduced by up to 15 Nm, and melt temperature was improved by up to 5 °C. The improved crystallization of the composites in low concentrations of GN was observed. Graphene has been found to increase the crystallization temperature up to 10 °C and yielded pronounced spherulite structure, whereas peak shift was observed in XRD. High filler loading from 0.5 to 6.0 wt\% was used to obtain more insights for few-layer graphene applications for thermoplastic polymer processing applications. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd

Poly(butylene succinate) and graphene nanoplatelet–based sustainable functional nanocomposite materials: structure-properties relationship

While the developments of additive manufacturing (AM) techniques have been remarkable thus far, they are still significantly limited by the range of printable, functional material systems that meet the requirements of a broad range of industries; including the health care, manufacturing, packaging, aerospace, and automotive industries. Furthermore, with the rising demand for sustainable developments, this review broadly gives the reader a good overview of existing AM techniques; with more focus on the extrusion-based technologies (fused deposition modeling and direct ink writing) due to their scalability, cost efficiency and wider range of material processability. It then goes on to identify the innovative materials and recent research activities that may support the sustainable development of extrusion-based techniques for functional and multifunctional (4D printing) part and product fabrication. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd

Fused deposition modeling-based additive manufacturing (3D printing): techniques for polymer material systems

Herein, porous sodium alginate/graphite based hybrid hydrogel was fabricated as an effective adsorbent for organic pollutant. Sodium alginate was modified through graft polymerization of acrylic acid and subsequently loaded with graphite powder to enhance its adsorption capability. The synthesized sodium alginate cross-linked acrylic acid/graphite (NaA-cl-AAc/GP) hydrogel composite was utilized in the removal of malachite green (MG) dye from aqueous solution using batch adsorption experiments. The NaA-cl-AAc/GP hydrogel composite was characterized by infrared spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, thermo-gravimetric analysis, scanning electron microscopy, x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and x-ray diffraction. Under optimized experimental conditions, a maximum adsorption capacity of 628.93 mg g−1 was attained for malachite green dye. Moreover, the adsorption process could be well described by the Langmuir isotherm model and pseudo-second-order kinetic model. The hydrogel composite also showed 91\% adsorption after three consecutive cycles of dye adsorption-desorption. Therefore, the NaA-cl-AAc/GP hydrogel composite is a potentially favourable material towards dye pollution remediation owing to its better swelling rate, environment friendliness, high adsorption potential and regeneration capability. © 2020 Elsevier B.V.

International Journal of Biological Macromolecules

Graphite modified sodium alginate hydrogel composite for efficient removal of malachite green dye

In recent years, numerous discoveries and investigations have been remarked for the development of carbon-based polymer nanocomposites. Carbon-based materials and their composites hold encouraging employment in a broad array of fields, for example, energy storage devices, fuel cells, membranes sensors, actuators, and electromagnetic shielding. Carbon and its derivatives exhibit some remarkable features such as high conductivity, high surface area, excellent chemical endurance, and good mechanical durability. On the other hand, characteristics such as docility, lower price, and high environmental resistance are some of the unique properties of conducting polymers (CPs). To enhance the properties and performance, polymeric electrode materials can be modified suitably by metal oxides and carbon materials resulting in a composite that helps in the collection and accumulation of charges due to large surface area. The carbon-polymer nanocomposites assist in overcoming the difficulties arising in achieving the high performance of polymeric compounds and deliver high-performance composites that can be used in electrochemical energy storage devices. Carbon-based polymer nanocomposites have both advantages and disadvantages, so in this review, attempts are made to understand their synergistic behavior and resulting performance. The three electrochemical energy storage systems and the type of electrode materials used for them have been studied here in this article and some aspects for example morphology, exterior area, temperature, and approaches have been observed to influence the activity of electrochemical methods. This review article evaluates and compiles reported data to present a significant and extensive summary of the state of the art. © 2020 by the authors.

Polymers

Carbon-based polymer nanocomposite for high-performance energy storage applications

Paclitaxel (PTX) and docetaxel (DTX) are key members of taxanes with high anti-tumor activity against various cancer cells. These chemotherapeutic agents suffer from a number of drawbacks and it seems that low solubility in water is the most important one. Although much effort has been made in improving the bioavailability of PTX and DTX, the low bioavailability and minimal accumulation at tumor sites are still the challenges faced in PTX and DTX therapy. As a consequence, bio-based nanoparticles (NPs) have attracted much attention due to unique properties. Among them, chitosan (CS) is of interest due to its great biocompatibility. CS is a positively charged polysaccharide with the capability of interaction with negatively charged biomolecules. Besides, it can be processed into the sheet, micro/nano-particles, scaffold, and is dissolvable in mildly acidic pH similar to the pH of the tumor microenvironment. Keeping in mind the different applications of CS in the preparation of nanocarriers for delivery of PTX and DTX, in the present review, we demonstrate that how CS functionalized-nanocarriers and CS modification can be beneficial in enhancing the bioavailability of PTX and DTX, targeted delivery at tumor site, image-guided delivery and co-delivery with other anti-tumor drugs or genes. © 2019 Elsevier B.V.