Summary Assessment of the activity of the soil microbial community is essential to evaluate the success of reclamation. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of reclamation on soil physiochemical, biological and microbial community properties. Soil samples were collected from 12 post‐mining sites with different lengths of time since reclamation (2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, 16, 19, 21, 23 and 26 years) at Pingshuo surface coal mine, China. Our results indicated soil organic and labile carbon, nitrogen, enzyme activities, microbial functional diversity, bacterial, archaeal and fungal abundances and taxonomic diversity improved with increasing time since reclamation. Soil pH and bulk density declined with increasing time after reclamation. Redundancy analysis revealed the importance of soil pH in microbial metabolic structure and bacterial genetic assemblages, and soil organic carbon in fungal genetic assemblages. The mine soil quality index (MSQI) was positively correlated with time since reclamation, and reclamation could be considered satisfactory at the 19‐year site with an MSQI >0.5. Soil enzyme activities were strongly correlated with microbial abundance. Our overall findings indicated that nutrition, microbial abundance and functional diversity of the soil ecosystem improved after reclamation. Highlights Reclamation improved nutrition, microbial abundance and diversity in soil of a mining site. Soil enzyme activities were correlated more strongly with microbial abundance than diversity. Soil pH and SOC played important roles in bacterial and fungal genetic assemblages, respectively, with reclamation. MSQI would take about 20 years to reach a satisfactory value after reclamation.

SrTiO 3 thin films were deposited on vitreous silica substrates at various substrate temperatures (300–700°C) by rf magnetron sputtering technique. The transition from amorphous phase to polycrystalline phase for the films occurred at the substrate temperatures of 300–400°C. Their optical properties were investigated by transmittance measurements. The fitting method was used to calculate the refractive index and the film thickness from the transparent region of the transmittance spectra. The refractive index increased and the film thickness decreased with the substrate temperatures increasing. The dispersion of the refractive index was studied by considering a single electronic oscillator model. The band gaps of the films were estimated from Tauc’s law and showed a decreasing tendency to that of the bulk SrTiO3 with the substrate temperatures increasing. These results provide some useful references for the potential application of SrTiO3 films in integrated optics devices.

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The uricase gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) composite nanomaterial was covalently immobilized on a biofilm, eggshell membrane. The uric acid biosensor was constructed by positioning the immobilized biofilm on the surface of a Clark dissolved oxygen electrode. The scanning electron micrograph revealed that the uricase AuNPs composite nanomaterial was successfully immobilized. The effects of enzyme loading, pH, concentration of phosphate buffer and temperature on the biosensor response have been stud ied in detail. The results showed that response time of the biosensor was 60 s, the linear range for the detec tion of uric acid varied from 1.0 µM to ~1.0 mM with a detection limit of 0.8 µM (S/N = 3) and relative standard deviation of 2.6% for 0.1 mM uric acid (n = 6). Some common potential interferents in samples demonstrated no interferences. The biosensor has been successfully applied to determine the uric acid level in urine and serum samples.