Improvements in the efficiency of combustion within a vehicle can lead to reductions in the emission of harmful pollutants and increased fuel efficiency. Gas sensors have a role to play in this process, since they can provide real time feedback to vehicular fuel and emissions management systems as well as reducing the discrepancy between emissions observed in factory tests and 'real world' scenarios. In this review we survey the current state-of-the-art in using porous materials for sensing the gases relevant to automotive emissions. Two broad classes of porous material - zeolites and metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) - are introduced, and their potential for gas sensing is discussed. The adsorptive, spectroscopic and electronic techniques for sensing gases using porous materials are summarised. Examples of the use of zeolites and MOFs in the sensing of water vapour, oxygen, NOx, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, hydrocarbons and volatile organic compounds, ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, sulfur dioxide and hydrogen are then detailed. Both types of porous material (zeolites and MOFs) reveal great promise for the fabrication of sensors for exhaust gases and vapours due to high selectivity and sensitivity. The size and shape selectivity of the zeolite and MOF materials are controlled by variation of pore dimensions, chemical composition (hydrophilicity/hydrophobicity), crystal size and orientation, thus enabling detection and differentiation between different gases and vapours.

The formulation of advanced molecular materials with bespoke polymeric ionic-liquid matrices that stabilize and solubilize hybrid organic-inorganic polyoxometalates and allow their processing by additive manufacturing, is effectively demonstrated. The unique photo and redox properties of nanostructured polyoxometalates are translated across the scales (from molecular design to functional materials) to yield macroscopic functional devices with reversible photochromism. These properties open a range of potential applications including reversible information storage based on controlled topological and temporal reduction/oxidation of pre-formed printed devices. This approach pushes the boundaries of 3D printing to the molecular limits, allowing the freedom of design enabled by 3D printing to be coupled with the molecular tuneability of polymerizable ionic liquids and the photoactivity and orbital engineering possible with hybrid polyoxometalates.

This study presents a novel fiber‐optic surface‐enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) probe (SERS‐on‐a‐tip) fabricated using a simple, two‐step protocol based on off‐the‐shelf components and materials, with a high degree of controllability and repeatability. Two‐photon polymerization and subsequent metallization are adopted to fabricate a range of SERS arrays on both planar substrates and end‐facets of optical fibers. For the SERS‐on‐a‐tip probes, a limit of detection of 10−7 m (Rhodamine 6G) and analytical enhancement factors of up to 1300 are obtained by optimizing the design, geometry, and alignment of the SERS arrays on the tip of the optical fiber. Furthermore, strong repeatability and consistency are achieved for the fabricated SERS arrays, demonstrating that the technique may be suitable for large‐scale fabrication procedures in the future. Finally, rapid SERS detection of live Escherichia coli cells is demonstrated using integration times in the milliseconds to seconds range. This result indicates strong potential for in vivo diagnostic use, particularly for detection of infections. Moreover, to the best of our knowledge, this represents the first report of detection of live, unlabeled bacteria using a fiber‐optic SERS probe.

Even though the development and use of ionic liquids (ILs) has rapidly grown in recent years in the literature, information addressing the environmental performance of these substances in a life cycle context is comparatively scarce. This review critiques the state-of-theart environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) studies on ILs in the literature, identifies the existing shortcomings, which could be delaying complete employment of the LCA framework to the field of ILs, and also identifies strategies for overcoming these shortcomings. This review indicates that there are several limitations associated with the implementation of the LCA in all steps and discusses them. Since data about manufacturing at industrial scale are generally inaccessible, a set of methods and assumptions have been used in previous studies to determine the life cycle inventories (LCIs), such as simplified LCA, "tree life-cycle approach", use of energy monitor devices, thermodynamic methods, chemical simulation process and other secondary data. However, the analysis of the data quality has not always been performed. Also, the shortage of the characterisation factors of ILs for human toxicity and ecotoxicity impact categories, prevents its inclusion within the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) step. Therefore, sufficient and complete life cycle inventory data for ionic liquids and precursor chemicals are essential for inventory analysis; and the LCIA needs to be clearly defined about the level of detail on the IL emissions. Current LCA studies on ILs have not covered all these aspects. To

Finding new ways of using visible light (or, more specifically, solar irradiation) to drive commercially significant and/or challenging chemical processes is an ongoing research goal. Polyoxometalates (POMs) are discrete, metal-oxide clusters which are cheap, robust and easily synthesised but can also act as versatile molecular building blocks, allowing for astonishing variety in their structures and properties. In particular, the rich redox chemistry and inherent photo-activity of POMs makes them attractive for use in a variety of photochemical applications, however POMs characteristically only absorb strongly in the UV region. In this perspective, we discuss the various strategies which have been employed in order to sensitise POMs to visible light, with a particular focus on hybrid inorganic-organic POM species. We will discuss the two clear photo-activation mechanisms which have been developed to date and provide an outlook on some of the possible future directions of the field.