Concerns over air quality reduction and energy crisis resulting from rapid consumption of limited fossil fuels have driven the development of clean and renewable energy sources.

We first time report a general strategy for one-step fabrication of a ZIF-8 MOF/RGO hydrogel, with the synergistic effects of chemical reduction and cross-linking by metal ions.

The production of cellulose-based aerogels from the conversion of cheap and rich precursors using environmentally friendly techniques is a very attractive subject in materials chemistry. In this work, we reports a facile strategy to construct flame retardant, sound-adsorption and mechanical enhancement cellulose-based composite aerogels by the incorporation of aluminum hydroxide nanoparticles (AH NPs) into cellulose gels via an in-situ sol-gel process, followed by freeze-drying to coat AH NPs on cellulose composite aerogels (AH NPs@cellulose composite aerogels). The results demonstrated that the AH NPs homogeneous dispersion within cellulose aerogel, and the presence of AH NPs did not have a remarkable influence on the homogeneous porous structure of cellulose aerogels when compared with cellulose aerogel prepared from the NaOH/urea/thiourea solution. The prepared composite cellulose aerogels showed excellent flame retardancy, the peak of heat release rate (PHRR) of the composite aerogels decreased significantly from 280 W/g of the control sample to 22 W/g, and total heat release (THR) of the composite aerogels decreased remarkably from 13.2 kJ/g to 1.6 kJ/g. Moreover, the incorporation of AH NPs composite aerogels exhibited remarkable mechanical properties, the compressive strength of the composite aerogels increased significantly from 0.08 MPa to 1.5 MPa. In addition, AH NPs composite cellulose aerogels have excellent sound absorption at high frequencies with a maximum sound absorption coefficient of 1. AH NPs composite cellulose aerogels have strong water and oil affinity. After immersing the samples in mixed silica nanoparticles, heptadecafluorononanoic, and fluoroalkyl silane solutions they became super-antiwetting, with a water contact angle (CA) larger than 150° and oil CA larger than 140°. In summary, this study provides a facile strategy to rationally construct flame retardant, mechanically robust, high-efficiency sound-adsorption and superamphiphobic cellulose-based composite aerogels, which have promising applications in the future as green engineering materials.

Multifuntional fabrics with special wettability have attracted a lot of interest in both fundamental research and industry applications over the last two decades. In this review, recent progress of various kinds of approaches and strategies to construct super-antiwetting coating on cellulose-based substrates (fabrics and paper) has been discussed in detail. We focus on the significant applications related to artificial superhydrophobic fabrics with special wettability and controllable adhesion, e.g., oil-water separation, self-cleaning, asymmetric/anisotropic wetting for microfluidic manipulation, air/liquid directional gating, and micro-template for patterning. In addition to the anti-wetting properties and promising applications, particular attention is paid to coating durability and other incorporated functionalities, e.g., air permeability, UV-shielding, photocatalytic self-cleaning, self-healing and patterned antiwetting properties. Finally, the existing difficulties and future prospects of this traditional and developing field are briefly proposed and discussed.

In order to improve the long-term effectiveness of essential oil, a double-layered microcapsule was prepared using the inclusion encapsulation method in this study, with β-cyclodextrin as its inner layer and chitosan and sodium alginate as its outer layer. The optimized preparation process was obtained through the response surface method. The morphology, particle size, encapsulation efficiency, thermal stability and sustained release effect of the double-layered microcapsules were characterized. The microcapsules were spherical, with a particle size distribution between 2–6 μm, and had good thermal stability within 250 °C. Their encapsulation efficiency can be up to 80%, and it can continuously release the active ingredients of the essential oil under normal temperature and high temperature conditions for a long time. In order to further examine the application effect of the double-layered microcapsule, it was loaded onto the cotton fabric by the soak-roll method. The finished cotton fabric showed excellent washability and rubbing fastness. They can still maintain a light fragrance naturally for two months. The microcapsules prepared in this study can be potentially applied in sleep aid, antibacterial, mosquito prevention, food science and other related products.