Real-time sensing of chemical warfare agents (CWAs) is, today, a crucial topic to prevent lethal effects of a chemical terroristic attack. For this reason, the development of efficient, selective, sensitive, and reversible sensoristic devices, which are able to detect by optical response the ppm levels of these compounds, both in water and in air, is strongly required. Here, we report the design and synthesis of a fluorescent nanosensor, based on carbon nanoparticles covalently functionalized with ethanolamine arms, which exploits the multitopic supramolecular interaction with nerve agents, ensuring highly efficient (log K 6.46) and selective molecular recognition. Moreover, given the aqueous dispersibility of carbon nanoparticles, these nanosensors ensure even higher sensitivity, detecting sub-ppt concentration of nerve agents in water, and subppm level in air by using a common digital camera or a smartphone. Our results pave the way to an innovative class of low-cost reusable CWA sensors, prompting, for the first time, the simultaneous detection of nerve agents through gaseous and aqueous media, thus extending the protection range to public water supplies.

Carbon nanoparticles represent a new class of nanocatalysts able to catalyze different reactions. This review collects the catalytic applications of these nanoparticles.

Chemical warfare agents are a class of organic molecules used as chemical weapons due to their high toxicity and lethal effects. For this reason, the fast detection of these compounds in the environment is crucial. Traditional detection methods are based on instrumental techniques, such as mass spectrometry or HPLC, however the use of molecular sensors able to change a detectable property (e. g., luminescence, color, electrical resistance) can be cheaper and faster. Today, molecular sensing of chemical warfare agents is mainly based on the “covalent approach”, in which the sensor reacts with the analyte, or on the “supramolecular approach”, which involves the formation of non‐covalent interactions between the sensor and the analyte. This Review is focused on the recent developments of supramolecular sensors of organophosphorus chemical warfare agents (from 2013). In particular, supramolecular sensors are classified by function of the sensing mechanism: i) Lewis Acids, ii) hydrogen bonds, iii) macrocyclic hosts, iv) multi‐topic sensors, v) nanosensors. It is shown how the supramolecular non‐covalent approach leads to a reversible sensing and higher selectivity towards the selected analyte respect to other interfering molecules.

The first nanocatalyst, obtained via “step-by-step” functionalization of CNPs, for enantioselective epoxidation of non-functionalized alkenes is reported here.

Nerve agents (NAs) are a group of highly toxic organophosphorus compounds developed before World War II. They are related to organophosphorus pesticides, although they have much higher human acute toxicity than commonly used pesticides. After the detection of the presence of NAs, the critical step is the fast decontamination of the environment in order to avoid the lethal effect of these organophosphorus compounds on exposed humans. This review collects the catalytic degradation reactions of NAs, in particular focusing our attention on chemical hydrolysis. These reactions are catalyzed by different catalyst categories (metal-based, polymeric, heterogeneous, enzymatic and MOFs), all of them described in this review.