Conductive hydrogels can be prepared by incorporating various conductive materials into polymeric network hydrogels. In recent years, conductive hydrogels have been developed and applied in the field of strain sensors owing to their unique properties, such as electrical conductivity, mechanical properties, self‐healing, and anti‐freezing properties. These remarkable properties allow conductive hydrogel‐based strain sensors to show excellent performance for identifying external stimuli and detecting human body movement, even at subzero temperatures. This review summarizes the properties of conductive hydrogels and their application in the fabrication of strain sensors working in different modes. Finally, a brief prospectus for the development of conductive hydrogels in the future is provided.

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Solar-driven interfacial evaporation with heat localization is an efficient method for large-scale water purification. However, due to the high latent heat of water evaporation and dilute solar flux (1 kW m–2), the solar steam productivity is low. Here, the latent heat of water evaporation was reduced because of the capillary water state in wood channels. We constructed a wood-based 3D solar evaporator via regulating the hydrophilicity of a surface of burnt wood and adjusting the height of the wood above a water surface. Capillary water was formed in the light absorption layer, resulting in the latent heat decrease from 2444 to 1769 J g–1. A high evaporation rate of 1.93 kg m–2 h–1 under one sun irradiation (1 kW m–2) was achieved. Together with the environmental energy-harvesting ability, the evaporation rate reached 3.91 kg m–2 h–1 (per occupied area), which is among the best values ever reported. More importantly, the 3D solar evaporator works efficiently in a water collection device, yielding 2.2 times more water than that of a common interfacial evaporator.

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In this work, an absorbent consisting of the maleic anhydride-modified cellulose beads combined with alkali-treated diatomite (MCDBs) was prepared in an attempt to remove basic dyes. An appropriate amount of calcium carbonate was added during the formation of MCDBs to increase the pore structure under an acidic condition. The synthesized MCDBs were characterized with FT-IR, TGA, and BET. The degree of carboxylation of MCDBs was quantified using a polyelectrolyte titration method. The removal of basic dyes such as methylene blue (MB) and methyl violet (MV) from aqueous solution was systematically investigated. The influence of pH, shaking time, and temperature on the removal process was identified. The results indicated that the MCDBs had a strong adsorption capacity toward basic dyes. The adsorption capacity increased from 51.6 to 116.6 mg/g for MB, depending on the initial concentration of the dye. A similar trend was also found for MV, i.e., adsorption increased from 30.5 to 61.1 mg/g. The experimental data fitted two kinetic models; the results demonstrated that the adsorption of MB and MV onto the MCDBs fits the pseudo-secondorder model very well. The removal efficiencies of the basic dyes under the optimal conditions were up to 97.5 %. The adsorption data were also fitted using Langmuir, Freundlich, and Temkin isotherms, separately. It was found that the adsorption process for the basic dyes was better described by the Langmuir isotherm model.

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Chitin/chitosan and their derivatives have become of great interest as functional materials in many fields within the papermaking industry. They have been employed in papermaking wet-end, paper surface coating, papermaking wastewater treatment, and other sections of the papermaking industry due to their structure and chemical properties. The purpose of this paper is to briefly discuss the application of chitin/chitosan and their derivatives in the papermaking industry. The development of their application in the papermaking area will be reviewed and summarized.

Basalt fiber reinforced polymer (BFRP) rebars reinforced coral aggregate concrete is a new type of concrete used in ocean engineering. In order to investigate the bond performance between BFRP rebars and coral concrete, 30 pull-out tests were carried out in 10 groups with different diameters of BFRP rebars, bonding lengths and strength of the coral concrete. The results show that good bonding between BFRP rebars and coral concrete were achieved. The main failure modes can be categorized as BFRP rebars pull out destruction, splitting failure of coral concrete and BFRP rebars fracture. The bond slip ($$\tau{\text{-}}s$$ τ - s ) curves of the BFRP rebars and coral concrete were obtained during the tests. It was found to be similar to the common concrete using fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) bars. The bond-slip relation can be roughly divided into micro-slip phase, slip phase, decline phase, and the residual stress stage. The bond between BFRP rebars and coral concrete increases with the increase of the bond length and diameter of BFRP rebars, but the average bond stress will decrease. Moreover, increasing the strength of coral concrete is effective to improve the bond performance of BFRP rebars. In this paper, the continuous bond slip model (Gao et al. in J Zhengzhou Univ 23:1–5, 2002) was used to represent the $$\tau{\text{-}}s$$ τ - s constitutive relationship of BFRP rebars and coral concrete. The analysis show that the proposed model has a high degree of accuracy in representing $$\tau{\text{-}}s$$ τ - s curve of BFRP rebars and coral concrete.