Shuo Wang's research while affiliated with Shanxi University and other places

This work demonstrated the efficacy of a proline-derived chiral urea for "on water" asymmet-ric hydrogen-bonding catalysis by incorporating a hydrophobic and electron-withdrawing pentafluoro-phenyl substituent into the urea moiety. When employed as a catalyst, pentafluorophenyl-substituted proline-derived chiral urea exhibited significant enhancement of both the reaction rate and stereoselectivity when conducted "on water" compared to that of conventional organic solvents due to the hydrophobic hydration effect. Moreover, this catalyst did not display notable self-aggregation during the "on water" hydrogen-bonding catalysis and was confirmed to exist as a monomeric species with catalytic activity. Due to its remarkable acceleration in "on water" conditions, the catalyst load was significantly reduced. Consequently, complete conversion was achieved at room temperature within 2 hours while maintaining good enantioselec-tivities (up to 96% ee) even at 0.2 mol% catalyst loading in the Michael addition of dithiomalonate to nitrostyrene.

This work demonstrated the efficacy of a proline‐derived chiral urea for “on water” asymmetric hydrogen‐bonding catalysis by incorporating a hydrophobic and electron‐withdrawing pentafluoro‐phenyl substituent into the urea moiety. When employed as a catalyst, pentafluorophenyl‐substituted proline‐derived chiral urea exhibited significant enhancement of both the reaction rate and stereoselectivity when conducted “on water” compared to that of conventional organic solvents due to the hydrophobic hydration effect. Moreover, this catalyst did not display notable self‐aggregation during the “on water” hydrogen‐bonding catalysis and was confirmed to exist as a monomeric species with catalytic activity. Due to its remarkable acceleration in “on water” conditions, the catalyst load was significantly reduced. Consequently, complete conversion was achieved at room temperature within 2 hours while maintaining good enantioselectivities (up to 96% ee) even at 0.2 mol% catalyst loading in the Michael addition of dithiomalonate to nitrostyrene.

Development of detection platforms having portable, easy-to-use, and cost-effective designs is essential for environmental monitoring as well as food safety inspection. Herein, we proposed a smartphone-based handheld sensing strategy integrated with nitrogen-doped carbon dots (NCDs) test strip by employing three-dimensional (3D) printing technology for visual detection of Hg²⁺. Using this handheld detection platform, the FL color of test strips varied from red to purple with the increase of Hg²⁺ concentration. A great linear response between the R/B value and Hg²⁺ concentration in the range of 0 μM− 125 μM was shown, with a detection limit of 0.024 μM. Further, the constructed platform was applied for quantitative detection of Hg²⁺ in real water samples. Interestingly, as-prepared NCDs allowed the monitoring of Hg²⁺ with the dual-signal ratiometric model. Finally, the NCDs were used to detect Hg²⁺ in biological systems with satisfactory results. This work will contribute to the new strategy to design easy-to-use and user-friendly devices for on-site quantitation of targets.