Edible mushroom: occurrence, management and health benefits

Owing to medicinal and nutraceutical properties, mushrooms have been consumed worldwide for many years. They are valued for their unique flavor, texture, and versatility in cooking. Numerous species of edible mushrooms have different habitats, ecological niches, and growth patterns. In a vegetarian diet, mushrooms have been preferred and widely accepted over a non-vegetarian one because of their low-calorie, high-protein content and their good source of carbohydrates and lipids. Edible mushrooms provide various macronutrients, micronutrients, minerals, and vitamins. Bioactive compounds extracted from different species of mushrooms exhibit various medicinal properties, such as antitumor, antioxidant, hypocholesterolemic, antiallergic, anti-inflammatory, and hypoglycemic effects. These properties are mainly due to polysaccharides like β-glucan, polyphenols like phenolic acids and flavonoids, carotenoids, and vitamins. Edible mushrooms are also potential prebiotics and are beneficial for human gut health. Secondary metabolites extracted from edible mushrooms are used to develop drugs to treat chronic diseases.In conclusion, edible mushrooms contain essential food supplements and versatile food sources that provide numerous health benefits. Effective management of edible mushroom production is crucial to ensure their continued availability, quality, and sustainability. The study of edible mushrooms and their health benefits continues to be an area of active research, and additional benefits will likely be further discovered

Experimental Electron Density Studies of Inorganic Solids

Since most of the modern methods for electron density research were developed and standardized primarily for organic molecular compounds, and to some extent for metal-organic complexes, their application to inorganic extended and periodic solids is not straightforward. Experimental electron density analyses of inorganic solids possess a few extra challenges in comparison to organic compounds. In particular, when the inorganic solid contains heavy elements, special care should be taken during the data collection, data processing and aspherical modelling of the electron density. The use of methods for rationalizing electron density, such as Bader’s quantum theory of atoms in molecules, which has been primarily standardized for organic molecular materials to inorganic solids, should also be carefully performed. This chapter briefly reviews the challenges and strategies of experimental techniques, and procedures for electron density studies of inorganic materials using multipole formalism, and discusses a few reported examples with varying complexities. The examples are carefully chosen in order to elucidate the prospects, strategies and challenges of electron density studies of inorganic solids containing heavy elements as well as inorganic solids with light elements

Charge Transfer and Fractional Bonds in Stoichiometric Boron Carbide

Charge Transfer and Fractional Bonds in Stoichiometric Boron Carbid

Chemiresistive NH3 detection at sub-zero temperatures by polypyrrole- loaded Sn1-xSbxO2 nanocubes

Chemiresistive gas sensors operate mainly at high temperatures, primarily due to the need of energy for surface adsorption-desorption of analytes. As a result, the operating temperature of the chemiresistive sensors could be reduced only to room temperature. Hence, a plethora of sensing requirements at temperatures below ambient have remained outside the scope of chemiresistive materials. In this work, we have developed an antimony-doped SnO2 nanocube-supported expanded polypyrrole network that could detect low ppm ammonia gas (<= 20 ppm) at sub-zero temperatures with high response (similar to 4), selectivity, and short response and recovery times. The low temperature chemiresistive sensing has been explained in terms of the interplay of an extended conducting network of an in situ deposited polymer, effective transport properties of majority charge carriers and a loosely bound exciton-like electron-hole pair formation and breakage mechanism

Dopant-mediated surface charge imbalance for enhancing the performance of metal oxide chemiresistive gas sensors

Chemically pristine and untailored metal oxide-based gas sensors usually suffer the brunt of poor sensitivity and selectivity. Doping with a suitable element is an efficient strategy to overcome the above challenges. However, to date, the choice of the dopant has been made primarily on empirical basis. This reflects the existence of lack of a general understanding as to what defines the suitability of a dopant. Based on surface electronic state analyses in different cases of dopant-enhanced gas sensing by tin oxide-based systems, we could identify a correlation between the role of the dopant oxidation states for generating surface charge imbalance and improvement in their respective sensing performances. The above studies were then extended to 54 different cases of dopant-induced sensing improvement in metal oxide-based systems and a similar correlation was observed. Based on the above observations, a generalized picture has been drawn that categorically delineates the role of surface charge imbalance in improved gas sensing performance. The above understanding is expected to make the choice of dopant more specific, paving the way for the development of highly sensitive gas sensors

Hierarchical Ti1-xZrxO2-y nanocrystals with exposed high energy facets showing co-catalyst free solar light driven water splitting and improved light to energy conversion efficiency

Zr substitution in the anatase TiO2 lattice with exposed high energy facets has been accomplished by a solvothermal process and characterized in detail. We observed that the selection of the solvent (n-propanol, nP or iso-propanol, iP) in the presence of titanium tetrachloride-zirconium n-propoxide mixture and structure directors played a crucial role in tuning the morphology, crystal structure and exposed facets of the resulting nanocrystals. Rietveld refinement of the PXRD data revealed the formation of Ti0.665Zr0.335O1.955 (TZ(nP)) and Ti0.912Zr0.088O1.963 (TZ(iP)) nanocrystals. TEM confirmed the presence of low index high energy {100} and {001} facets in cube-like TZ(nP) and hollow spherical TZ(iP) decorated with truncated crystallites, respectively. XPS revealed the presence of Ti3+ (13-16%) defect states in both the systems. These nanocrystalline materials were explored as co-catalyst free photocatalysts in solar water splitting for H-2 generation. Interestingly, Zr modified photocatalysts (TZ(nP) and TZ(iP)) showed H-2 evolution rates of 90 and 356 mmol g(-1) after 6 h, respectively without any support of a Pt co-catalyst. Further, the overall solar light to energy conversion efficiencies of TZ(nP) and TZ(iP) as photoanodes in dye sensitized solar cell (DSSCs) have been investigated and their efficiencies were found to be 5.40 and 7.52%, respectively. Therefore, these Zr modified TiO2 nanocrystals could be very promising as cost-effective photocatalysts for future fuel generation and DSSC materials

Surface-analyte interaction as a function of topological polar surface area of analytes in metal (Cd, Al, Ti, Sn) sulfide, nitride and oxide based chemiresistive materials

Material surface - analyte interactions play important roles in numerous surface mediated processes including gas sensing. However, effects of topological polar surface area (TPSA) of target analytes on surface interactions during gas sensing have been so far largely disregarded. In this work, based on experimental observations on cross-sensitivity in cadmium sulfide (CdS) nanoparticle based room temperature gas sensor, we found that for reactions with similar Energy Rate of Surface Interaction (ERSI), unexpected quadratic correlation exists between sensing response of CdS and TPSA of analytes. From general understanding and as reported earlier in case of drug absorption through surface of membranes, it is expected that surface interactions would decrease with increasing TPSA of analytes. Our results imply that for certain TPSA range, sensor surface-analyte interactions actually increase with increasing TPSA before it finally starts decreasing. Further experiments on four other diverse material systems like AlN, SnO2, TiO2 (Anatase) and Vanadium-doped SnO2 showed similar trend, revealing generalized picture of TPSA dependence of sensor surface-analyte interactions. A physical explanation behind the parabolic relation has been provided based on electrostatic energy minimization of interacting polar fields. Above finding is anticipated to pave way to achieve improved surface interactions and highly selective sensing performances consecutively

Synthesis, Superstructure, and Vacancy-Ordering in 2H−CuxTa1+ySe2\mathrm{2H-Cu_{x}Ta_{1+y}Se_{2}} (x , y = 0.52, 0 and 0.16, 0.08)

Single crystals of CuxTa$_{1+y}$Se$_{2}$ were grown by chemical vapor transport. Single crystals of different compositions were obtained at slightly different reaction conditions from mixtures of the reactants of the same nominal composition. It is suggested that different diameters of the ampoules imply different contributions of convection and diffusion to the mass transport, and thus are responsible for different ratios of the amount of Cu, Ta, and Se transported. 2H-Cu$_{0.52}$TaSe$_{2}$ (x = 0.52, y = 0) is formed in the narrower ampoule (diameter 15 mm). The crystal structure is based on the MoS2 type of stacking of TaSe$_{2}$ layers. Partial ordering of Cu over the tetrahedral sites is responsible for a 2a$_{0}$ × 2b$_{0}$ × c$_{0}$ superstructure with hexagonal Pequation imagem2 symmetry [a0 = 3.468 (1) Å, c0 = 13.568 (3) Å]. 2H-Cu$_{0.16}$Ta$_{1.08}$Se$_{2}$ (x = 0.16, y = 0.08) is formed in the wider ampoule (diameter 18 mm). It possesses a NbS2-type of stacking. A superstructure is not formed, but the presence of Cu and intercalated Ta in alternating van der Waals gaps is responsible for the reduction of symmetry from P$_{63}$/mmc to P$_{6}$m1 [a$_{0}$ = 3.439 (2) Å, c$_{0}$ = 12.870 (2) Å]. Single crystals are formed towards the hotter side of the ampoules up to a temperature of 1168 K in both reactions

Band gap engineered Sn-doped bismuth ferrite nanoparticles for visible light induced ultrafast methyl blue degradation

Remediation of water pollution persists as major concern for scientists and industry. Various ceramic based nanomaterials have been used in efficient photocatalytic degradation of different industrial dyes. However, the major factors that restrict efficacy of these systems are requirement of UV source for activating dye degradation process, prolonged time for degradation and lower efficiency. This paves way to development of alternative material systems that can resolve above problems by not only ensuring maximum dye degradation in minimum time in presence of visible light but also reusability in several cycles. In this work, we report visible light driven photocatalytic degradation of methyl blue (MB) using Sn-doped bismuth ferrite (BFO) nanoparticles. Different concentrations (0, 1%, 1.5%, 2%) of Sn-doped BFO nanoparticles were synthesized using facile sol-gel methods. It was observed that 1.5% Sn-doped BFO nanoparticle exhibits highest photocatalytic activity towards MB degradation compared with pure and other doped BFO nanoparticles. 1.5% Sn-doped BFO nanoparticle de-lineates 70% dye degradation capability within 10 min of irradiation under visible light. 1.5% Sn-doped sample shows 99% degradation capability within 2 h of visible light irradiation while pristine BFO nanoparticles can degrade only 20% under identical conditions. Additionally, 1.5% Sn-doped BFO nanoparticles are also capable of degrading RhB, another important contaminant. The 1.5% Sn-doped BFO nanoparticle could be a promising photocatalyst for efficient degradation of industrial effluents having various dyes. The efficient dye degradation of 1.5% Sn doped BFO nanoparticle has been explained in terms of increased density of surface active sites evident from bulk structural analyses and greater probability of generation of electron-hole pairs on surface by virtue of reduced band gap. A theoretical modelling of band structure has been done to identify surface .OH ions as most effective species to promote dye degradation

Superspace description of trimethyltin hydroxide at T = 100 K

At low temperatures the metalorganic compound trimethyltin hydroxide, (CH$_3$)$_3$SnOH, possesses a commensurately modulated crystal structure, the modulation wave vector can be described as $q = \frac{1}{2} c*$. The crystal structure is studied by analysing single-crystal X-ray diffraction data within the (3+1)-dimensional superspace approach and superspace group P21212(00γ)00s. The corresponding twofold superstructure has space group symmetry P2$_1$2$_1$2$_1$. The structure is characterised by polymeric chains running along c-axis, generated by Sn–O–Sn bridges between neighbouring Sn atoms and packed in a distorted hexagonal pattern and linked via C–H···O interstrand hydrogen bonds along the (orthorhombic) directions [110] and [11̅0], but not along [100]