Volume 36, Issue 4

The academic and industrial research on the interactions of complexing agents with the environment has received more attention for more than half a century ago and has always been concerned with the applications of chelating agents in the environment. In contrast, in recent years, an increasing scholarly interest has been demonstrated in the chemical and biological degradation of chelating agents. This is reflected by the increasing number of chelating agents-related publications between 1950 and middle of 2016. Consequently, the discovery of new green biodegradable chelating agents is of great importance and has an impact in the non-biodegradable chelating agent’s replacement with their green chemistry analogs. To acquire iron, many bacteria growing aerobically, including marine species, produce siderophores, which are low-molecular-weight compounds produced to facilitate acquisition of iron. To date and to the best of our knowledge, this is a concise and complete review article of the current and previous relevant studies conducted in the field of production, purification of siderophore compounds and their metal complexes, and their roles in biology and medicine.

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are considered as one of the most intensively explored nanostructured materials and have been widely used as a platform material for metal and semiconductor nanoparticles (NPs) due to their large and chemically active surface area. Several approaches have been described in the literature to immobilize NPs on the surface of CNTs. This report reviews the recent developments in this area by exploring the various techniques where nanotubes can be functionalized with NPs to improve the optical, mechanical, thermal, medical, electrical, and magnetic applications of CNTs.