Dear Colleagues,

The rapid consumption of non-reproducible, fossil-based energy and materials sources and global warming due to the extensive CO₂ production are among the top global concerns, making reproducible materials that generate minimal impact on the environment, or, “Green Materials”, necessary and important for the sustainable growth of modern society. Broadly defined, “Green Materials” include but not limit to i) natural materials whose growth can be solely relied on sustainable, reproducible sources such as sunlight, rain water, soil, and wind, ii) renewable materials prepared from either reproducible or non-reproducible sources yet can be re-covered/recycled after each round of use, and iii) harmless and non-toxic materials, natural or man-made, which place minimal to negligible negative impact to the environment. For natural "Green Materials", strategies that can degrade the biomass and extract useful components without substantially harming the environment and/or costing non-reproducible resources are necessary. For man-made "Green Materials", strategies that rely on low-cost, ideally reproducible resources of chemicals and minimal energy input while generating biodegradable by-products and negligible negative impact to the environment are favored. To save energy and materials sources on earth and reduce global warming, preparing and maximizing the use of “Green Materials” has become the central focus of materials, energy, and sustainable chemistry research.

Thus, we are interested in collecting the most up-to-date research in the framework of natural reproducible materials, biodegradation and degradation of natural biomass, catalyst and biocatalyst design, green chemistry, sustainable materials development, and biocatalysis. Both experimental and computational efforts including artificial intelligence (AI) or machine learning-guided materials design and characterization are welcome. We are also interested in green procedures which generate useful, renewable materials under “green” conditions using materials or elements that are abundant on earth. Both research articles and reviews in these areas are welcome. 

We look forward to receiving your contributions. 

Dr. Zhongyu Yang

Section Editor