Lead is a highly toxic and persistent heavy metal that poses serious risks to human health. The detection of lead ions in water is therefore essential not only for balancing economic and environmental priorities, improving public services, and ensuring agricultural safety, but also for preventing lead poisoning, promoting health equity, and safeguarding international trade in the context of global health. Conventional detection methods are often limited by expensive instrumentation and complex procedures, whereas surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) has emerged as a promising alternative due to its high sensitivity and operational simplicity.

High entropy alloys (HEAs), namely multi-principal element alloys, are a novel class of multi-component materials. HEAs have drawn widespread attention in materials science due to their unique mix of features, which include great mechanical properties, good wear and corrosion resistance, acceptable soft magnetic performance, and stability at high temperatures. However, the role of rare-earth (RE) elements on the microstructure and various performances of multi-principal element amorphous alloys (MPEAAs) is still vague.

Hydrogel materials possess unique physicochemical properties, including high water absorption, strong moisture retention, biocompatibility, tunable mechanical properties, environmental responsiveness, biodegradability, and a three-dimensional network structure. These characteristics endow them with significant practical value and broad application prospects in fields such as tissue engineering and biomedicine.

The issue of environmental pollution has got worse due to the quick expansion of manufacturing, industry, and human society. Among different pollutants, the emission impact of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) has been steadily expanding, posing a significant challenge to human health. Gas sensors are devices that convert gas concentration from chemical to electrical signals and play a central role in real-time gas detection system.

Contact-free and object-agnostic 3D rotation at the micro/nanoscale is playing an increasingly important role in advanced imaging, biology, and microrobotics. Towards this goal, Scientist in Germany developed an opto-thermoviscous micromanipulation strategy that enables robust out-of-plane spinning and sheathless focusing in highly viscous media. The technique opens new avenues for all-optical manipulation-enabled multiview 3D microscopy and advanced biological imaging.

A laser-based technology being developed at Adelaide University could soon help authorities detect deadly counterfeit alcohol, expose wine fraud and even identify dangerous chemicals inside sealed bottles – all without opening them.

Transition metal-based electrocatalysts, especially NiFe (oxy)hydroxides, represent state-of-the-art systems for the alkaline oxygen evolution reaction (OER). While structural evolution of electrocatalysts under working conditions has garnered considerable attention, as the evolved structure often dictates catalytic activity, the mechanisms driving these transformations and catalytic performance remain poorly understood. In this work, using NiFe phosphide (NiFeP) as a model system, we systematically elucidate how phosphorus guides irreversible structural transformations and boosts OER performance. Through a combination of electron microscopy, spectroscopy, and electrochemical analysis, we demonstrate that phosphorus facilitates the transformation of NiFeP into NiFe (oxy)hydroxides while retaining residual oxyanion moieties. Importantly, we reveal that phosphorus not only accelerates the active phase formation but also suppresses Fe dissolution and directly modulates the electronic structure, a dual function that has not been well-documented in the literature. The reconstructed catalyst exhibits outstanding OER activity and remarkable stability under alkaline conditions, achieving a low overpotential of 225 mV at 10 mA cm⁻² and stably maintaining a current density of 500 mA cm⁻² for over 100 h, ranking among the most effective OER catalysts reported in the literature. Density functional theory calculations indicated that the resulting PO₄³⁻ and Fe act synergistically to regulate the redox chemistry of Ni, preventing Ni over-oxidation and enhancing electronic conductivity. Furthermore, PO₄³⁻ stabilizes key OER intermediates and lower the thermodynamic energy barrier, thereby improving catalytic performance.