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Background: Antimicrobial resistance has become a serious concern and threat to global health. This has triggered the need for the design of new antimicrobials. In this study, poly‐ionic liquid (PIL) homopolymers have been designed by varying the alkyl chain lengths to evaluate their pathogeneses against Gram‐positive (Staphylococcus aureus) and Gram‐negative bacteria (Escherichia coli). Results: The results demonstrated that the antimicrobial and antibiofilm activities depend on the alkyl chain length of PILs (C10 > C8 > C6). To support the experimental findings, in silico analyses were performed to explore the structural and functional information of bacterial RNA polymerase (RNAP) enzymes. A switch region was identified between RNAP β subunit (RpoB) and RNAP β' subunit (RpoC) with 1119 amino acids (aa) and 1504 (2–1505) aa, respectively. The docking analysis reflected the docking energies −5.313 kcal mol−1 for RNAP‐poly‐1‐vinyl‐3‐hexyl imidazolium complex, −4.634 kcal mol−1 for RNAP‐poly‐1‐vinyl‐3‐octyl imidazolium complex, and −3.456 kcal mol−1 for RNAP‐poly‐1‐vinyl‐3‐decyl imidazolium complex. Conclusion: The synthesized PIL samples exhibited antibacterial and antibiofilm activities against E. coli and S. aureus. However, the effect on E. coli was more prominent in comparison to S. aureus. The results indicated that both electrostatic interaction and hydrophobic effect played a vital role in enhancing the antibacterial as well as antibiofilm activities. In addition, in silico analysis identified the 'switch region' between RNAP β subunit (RpoB) and RNAP β subunit (RpoC). The novel target appeared to be a binding region for PILs and restricted the synthesis of bacterial RNA. It can be concluded that imidazolium‐based PILs can be used as safe antibacterial materials in the healthcare sector. © 2024 Society of Chemical Industry (SCI). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, bacterial infection has become one of the significant clinical challenges. The overuse or misuse of antibiotics increases the number of antibiotic‐resistant bacterial pathogens and causes enormous medical burdens with high morbidity and mortality. Several strategies have been adopted to tackle this; poly‐ionic liquids (PILs), a class of ionic liquids (ILs) systems demonstrating a broad spectrum of antimicrobial activities, have been widely used in biomedical applications. During polymerization, the charge density of the cations, molecular weight, and hydrophobic behavior can be regulated to accomplish more potent antibacterial efficacy with low cytotoxicity. However, inadequate literature is available highlighting the application of PIL‐based materials in biomedical applications. Keeping this in mind, the recent advances in PIL‐based biomaterials formed by conjugating PIL with natural and synthetic polymers as effective antimicrobial agents have been the focus area of this review. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neodymium is critically scarce and is often used in supportable technologies such as permanent magnets, batteries, and catalysts. The extraction of it from virgin ores causes environmental degradation and recycling of end‐of‐life (EOL) products proves to be an alternative to meet its future criticality. From an environmental and economic point of view, magnets produced from recovered neodymium perform better than the ones produced from virgin neodymium. In this review various technologies such as hydro metallurgy, pyro metallurgy, supercritical CO2 extraction, desalination, and adsorption have been discussed for the recovery of this metal from different EOL sources. The advantages and limitations of these methods are summarized. Different experimental status like sources, temperature, aqueous phase composition, organic phase make up, and maximum recovery efficiency are also looked upon. This review may prove beneficial for the researchers to design recovery road maps under different circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study reports the density (ρ), molar volume (V), partial molar volume (Vm1)/(Vm2) and refractive index (nD) of the binary mixture of 2‐methylimidazole and 1‐butanol/octanol at T=300.15–318.15 K. The accuracy of the experimental results was checked with different refractive mixing models like Lorentz‐Lorentz (L−L), Arago‐Biot (A−B), Gladstone‐Dale (G−D), Newton (N), Heller (H) and Wiener (W) and the root mean square deviation have also been presented.. The excess values were fitted to Redlich‐Kister polynomial equation and the standard deviations were also calculated. The negative VE and ΔnD values at higher mole fraction of 2‐methylimidazole indicate specific interaction between the unlike components due to hydrogen bonding but with rise in temperature the bonds tend to dissociate leading to restricted associations. Density functional theory has also been used to investigate the effective reactivity between 2‐methylimidazole and 1‐butanol/1‐octanol. The difference between ELUMO and EHOMO ranged from −12.9 to 16.523 kcal/mol. 2‐methylimidazole‐1‐octanol displayed greatest reactivity with lowest band energy gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]