Chapters authored
Antioxidants: Natural Antibiotics
The aim of this current piece of writing is to draw the attention of readers and researchers toward the natural antioxidants that can take the place of synthetic antibiotics to avoid bacterial resistance and gastrotoxicity/nephrotoxicity. Antioxidants such as polyphenols, vitamins, and carotenoids are the organic compounds mainly extracted from natural sources and dominantly involved in boosting the defense system of organisms. The main public health-related issue over the globe is ever-growing bacterial resistance to synthetic antibiotics, which is being continuously reported during the last decade. Further, the pipeline of the development of new synthetic antibacterial agents to replace the resistant antibiotics in clinical set-up is gradually drying up. This scenario originated the concept to revive the interest toward natural antibacterial products due to their chemical diversity, which provide important therapeutic effect and make the microbes unable to copy them for creating resistance. Natural products, especially polyphenols had been seen in antioxidant, antibacterial, anticancer, anti-inflammation, and antiviral activities with encouraging results. In this chapter, we will focus over the role of natural antioxidants as antibacterial agents.
Part of the book: Antioxidants
Applications of Carbon Based Materials in Developing Advanced Energy Storage Devices
With the increasing pressure of population, the energy demand is growing explosively. By 2050, it is expected that the world population may reach to about 9 billion which may result in the increase of energy requirement to about 12.5 trillion watts. Due to increasing pressures of population, industries and technology, concerns to find possibilities to cope with increasing demand of energy resources, arise. Although the renewable energy resources including fossil fuels, wind, water and solar energy have been used for a long time to fulfill the energy requirements, but they need efficient conversions and storage techniques and are responsible for causing environmental pollution due to greenhouse gases as well. It is thus noteworthy to develop methods for the generation and storage of renewable energy devices that can replace the conventional energy resources to meet the requirement of energy consumption. Due to high energy demands, the sustainable energy storage devices have remained the subject of interest for scientists in the history, however, the traditional methods are not efficient enough to fulfill the energy requirements. In the present era, among other variety of advanced treatments, nano-sciences have attracted the attention of the scientists. While talking about nano-science, one cannot move on without admiring the extraordinary features of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and other carbon based materials. CNTs are on the cutting edge of nano science research and finding enormous applications in energy storage devices. Excellent adsorption capabilities, high surface area, better electrical conductivity, high mechanical strength, corrosion resistance, high aspect ratio and good chemical and physical properties of CNTs have grabbed tremendous attention worldwide. Their charge transfer properties make them favorable for energy conversion applications. The limitation to the laboratory research on CNTs for energy storage techniques due to low specific capacitance and limited electrochemical performance can be overcome by surface functionalization using surface functional groups that can enhance their electrical and dispersion properties. In this chapter, ways CNTs employed to boost the abilities of the existing material used to store and transfer of energy have been discussed critically. Moreover, how anisotropic properties of CNTs play important role in increasing the energy storage capabilities of functional materials. It will also be discussed how various kinds of materials can be combined along CNTs to get better results.
Part of the book: Carbon Nanotubes