The major challenges facing oil production during/after secondary recovery include oil entrapment by water and high water mobility. Hence, currently, Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) is considered a key solution for increasing oil production upon reaching the tertiary production phase. Unfortunately, EOR still has its drawbacks including the degradation of the chemicals (polymers and surfactants) used under reservoir conditions, large required volumes of chemicals, and their high cost. Nanotechnology is an emerging technology that has profoundly changed the course of different applications in various fields. In petroleum engineering, this modification can be attributed to the nanomaterials' unique properties including high surfaceto-volume ratio, wettability control, and interfacial tension reduction. To this end, the use of nanomaterials to enhance oil recovery is a very attractive, yet challenging task. This mini-review focuses on the recent efforts to explore the effects of various nanomaterial additives on the EOR process as well as the proposed mechanisms.

The use of titanium dioxide nanotubes in the powder form (TNTP) has been a hot topic for the past few decades in many applications.

Pyrroloquinoline quinone (PQQ), present in breast milk and various foods, is highly recommended as an antioxidant, anti-inflammatory agent, and a cofactor in redox reactions in several biomedical fields.

Organic–inorganic hybrid perovskite compounds are currently the archetypal materials for high performance photovoltaic (PV) and optoelectronic devices. However, the remaining bottlenecks preventing their large-scale production are their environmental/thermal instability and lead toxicity. Herein, we demonstrate a novel approach to synthesize single-phase electrospun Cs2SnI x Cl6–x double perovskites with varying halide content (I, Cl, or mixed I/Cl) as active materials for potential application in perovskite solar cells (PSCs). The X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy analyses indicated the in situ formation of graphene oxide (GO) during the annealing process. The GO layer was found to enhance the optical properties and thermal stability of the fabricated perovskites even at high Cl content. Moreover, the presence of GO as an insulating layer significantly decreases the bandgap energy of the resulting perovskites. The perovskites with a mix iodide and chloride ions showed significantly improved optical properties with higher photoluminescence (PL) intensity than that of pure chloride or iodide counterparts. Moreover, the compound with low chloride content showed superior thermal stability to those reported in the literature. Therefore, the application of the electrospinning technique is a useful strategy to in situ incorporate GO in lead-free perovskite matrix for potential photovoltaic and optoelectronic applications.

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The detection of carbon dioxide (CO2) is critical for environmental monitoring, chemical safety control, and many industrial applications. The manifold application fields as well as the huge range of CO2 concentration to be measured make CO2 sensing a challenging task. Thus, the ability to reliably and quantitatively detect carbon dioxide requires vastly improved materials and approaches that can work under different environmental conditions. Due to their unique favorable chemical, optical, physical, and electrical properties, nanomaterials are considered state-of-the-art sensing materials. This mini-review documents the advancement of nanomaterial-based CO2 sensors in the last two decades and discusses their strengths, weaknesses, and major applications. The use of nanomaterials for CO2 sensing offers several improvements in terms of selectivity, sensitivity, response time, and detection, demonstrating the advantage of using nanomaterials for developing high-performance CO2 sensors. Anticipated future trends in the area of nanomaterial-based CO2 sensors are also discussed in light of the existing limitations.

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Pumpkin seed oil was combined with polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) and chitosan (CS) to develop novel electrospun nanofibers that can serve as wound scaffolds. The main objective of this work is to evaluate the safety, drug release, and performance of these scaffolds for dermal and oral wound healing. The scaffolds were characterized using a field scanning electron microscope (FSEM), and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). A series of tests were conducted, including the degree of swelling and degradation, in vitro drug release, antibacterial activity, and cytotoxicity in human dermal fibroblasts adult (HDFa). Wound healing activity in an excisional dermal and incisional oral wound's rat model was evaluated after 10 days. Antibacterial tests of the Pumpkin loaded CS/PVA nanofibers showed significant antibacterial activity against S. aureus and E. coli compared to negative controls. In vivo dermal wound healing showed that all treatment groups enhanced wound healing, as demonstrated by the increased wound closure percentages compared to negative control groups on 3, 5, and 10 days. Compared to other treatment groups, pumpkin-loaded CS/PVA nanofibers significantly enhanced healing on 7 and 10 days, however, healing was delayed afterward. In oral wound healing, the qualitative Hematoxylin and Eosin (HÀ E) histological examination of the oral wounds treated with pumpkin-loaded scaffolds showed an enhanced healing rate with healthy architecture compared to the wounds treated with unloaded scaffolds or untreated wounds. These results indicate that Pumpkin loaded nanofibers are promising for both dermal and oral wound healing. They offer a new safe and cheap alternative to the commercial treatments that are used for wound healing. The results also highlight the combination of using natural botanical compounds and emerging nanoscience for biomedical applications, primarily wound healing.