University of Waterloo engineers have developed a low-cost, customizable 3D-printed filter that removes up to 90 per cent of microplastics from water, offering an inexpensive solution for both residential and industrial uses. 

Emerging Contaminants is a leading platform for research addressing the potential ecological and human health risks associated with environmental contamination from emerging contaminants.

This article collection features papers published in Environmental Surfaces and Interfaces since 2025 on the theme of materials-driven environmental pollutant removal. It focuses on the development of novel materials and their practical applications in environmental pollutant remediation. All articles are freely available for reading.

Solid electrolytes are promising materials for safer, more compact all-solid-state batteries, but producing smooth thin films with high ionic conductivity remains challenging. In a recent study, researchers from Shibaura Institute of Technology, Japan, developed a multilayer method using lithium borohydride and lithium iodide to create high-iodine thin films. Their approach improved iodine incorporation, maintained relatively smooth surfaces, and produced good room-temperature ionic conductivity, opening new possibilities for thin-film solid electrolytes.

Lithium cobalt oxide (LiCoO₂, LCO) stands as one of the most representative cathode materials in lithium-ion batteries. The improvement in energy density of LiCoO₂ is essentially achieved by increasing the charge cut-off voltage. However, under high-voltage conditions, the electrolyte solvent molecules undergo severe oxidative decomposition at the cathode interface. Moreover, a series of issues including transition metal dissolution, oxygen release, and deteriorated thermal stability, have become bottlenecks that severely restrict its practical application.

To address this challenge, Prof. Yang Sun (Sun Yat-sen University), Associate Researcher Maolin Yang (Xiamen University), Professors Qiaobao Zhang (Xiamen University), Yu Qiao (Xiamen University), and Academician Shi-gang Sun (Xiamen University) have proposed a novel strategy to stabilize high-voltage LiCoO₂ cathodes by coating them with a conformal zeolite layer using a scalable high-speed solid-phase mechanofusion technique. The sub-nano channels of zeolite enable complete Li⁺ desolvation, creating a locally supersaturated electrolyte that suppresses solvent decomposition. The Zeolite@LCO cathode achieves ~83% capacity retention after 300 cycles at 4.8 V and stable operation at 5.0 V, with significantly enhanced thermal safety. This work provides a translatable paradigm for high-energy-density lithium-ion batteries. This work was recently published online in Science Bulletin.

In a paper published in Science China Chemistry, a research team led by Professors Atsuhiro Osuka and Jianxin Song at Hunan Normal University developed a concise synthetic method for the single, double, triple, and quadruple installations of directly fused hemiporphycenes at the periphery of Ni(II) porphyrin. They subjected the Ni(II) complexes to demetallation under acidic conditions, which furnished the corresponding free-base compounds, and efficiently converted these to the corresponding Zn(II) congeners. The resulting hemiporphycene-fused porphyrins displayed nonplanar distorted structures, panchromatic absorptions with red-shifted and enhanced Q bands, and multiple reversible redox waves.

In shale reservoirs, total oil content does not necessarily show where oil is stored or how mobile it may be. Researchers led by Bo Liu at Northeast Petroleum University developed a multiscale workflow that combines swelling-extraction experiments, SEM/AFM pore characterization and molecular dynamics simulations. The study separates shale oil into five occurrence types: kerogen-swelling oil, adsorbed oil in organic pores, free oil in organic pores, adsorbed oil in inorganic pores and free oil in inorganic pores. The framework offers a tool with strong applicability across study areas for understanding oil-rock interactions and evaluating shale-oil mobility in continental shale systems.