Maternal vaccines protect babies from serious infections, but unequal access limits benefits across Europe

Experts call for coordinated action to prepare Europe for the next generation of maternal vaccines

City St George’s, University of London

Facebook

XLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

Europe must act now to strengthen maternal vaccination in pregnancy and ensure all women and babies can benefit from a new generation of vaccines to protect against serious infections. That is according to a new Lancet Regional Health - Europe Series led by Professor Asma Khalil at City St George's, University of London, which is being launched and presented today at the 2026 Global Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine Congress in Utrecht.

The Series found maternal RSV vaccination was associated with an approximately 74% lower risk of hospitalisation for RSV-related lower respiratory tract infection in babies younger than six months. However, evidence also suggests substantial inequalities in access, with one UK study finding women living in the most deprived areas had 72% lower odds of receiving vaccination than women living in the least deprived areas.

While scientific advances in maternal immunisation are moving rapidly, health systems have not kept pace. Fragmented delivery models, unequal access, gaps in surveillance and uncertainty over responsibility for vaccine delivery continue to limit uptake and leave many women and babies without protection, all of which need to be tackled head-on in a coordinated manner.

Professor Asma Khalil, Professor of Obstetrics and Maternal Fetal Medicine in the School of Health & Medical Sciences at City St George's, University of London, and Chair of the Series, said:

“Maternal vaccination is one of the most powerful public health interventions, giving protection to both pregnant women and their babies from serious infectious diseases. We now have new vaccines becoming available and other vaccine candidates progressing through clinical development, but introducing a vaccine is only the first step. Women need timely access, trusted information and convenient services if these programmes are to achieve their full benefit.

“Across Europe we continue to see substantial variation in uptake and persistent inequalities in access. Our Series shows that countries should begin preparing now for the next generation of maternal vaccines rather than waiting until new programmes are introduced."

Maternal RSV vaccination significantly reduces infant hospitalisations

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is a common cause of a type of chest infection called bronchiolitis, but it can cause breathing problems and may require treatment in hospital. A systematic review and meta-analysis included in the Series found maternal RSV vaccination was associated with an approximately 74% lower risk of hospitalisation for RSV-related lower respiratory tract infection in babies younger than six months.

The pooled analysis of 16,394 pregnancies did not identify a statistically significant association between maternal RSV vaccination and preterm birth. Continued safety monitoring remains important as vaccination programmes expand.

The findings provide reassurance about the real-world effectiveness of maternal RSV vaccination, while reinforcing the importance of delivering vaccination within the recommended gestational window, with sufficient time before birth for protective antibodies to develop and transfer to the baby.

However, evidence presented in the Series suggests not all women are benefiting equally. One UK study included in the review found substantial lower maternal RSV vaccination uptake among women living in the most deprived areas (a 72% lower odds) than among those living in the least deprived areas.

New vaccines are coming but health systems must be ready

The Series also highlights a growing pipeline of maternal vaccines that could help protect pregnant women from serious infections as well as newborn babies during the first weeks and months of life.

A different paper in press for the Series, led by Professor Paul Heath from City St George's, examines the next generation of maternal vaccines in development. Among the most advanced candidates are vaccines against group B streptococcus (GBS), a leading cause of neonatal sepsis and meningitis worldwide.

The authors argue that countries should begin preparing now for future maternal immunisation programmes, including strengthening surveillance systems, developing delivery pathways and supporting healthcare professionals to discuss vaccination confidently with pregnant women, all before new vaccines receive regulatory approval.

Professor Paul Heath, Professor of Paediatric Infectious Diseases at City St George's, University of London, said:

"We are entering a new era for maternal immunisation. For decades we have understood the value of protecting mothers and babies through vaccination during pregnancy, but we are now seeing a pipeline of new vaccines that could prevent serious infections in the earliest months of life."

"The science is advancing quickly. The challenge now is ensuring health systems are ready to deliver these vaccines effectively, monitor their impact and make sure all families can benefit, regardless of where they live or what their circumstances are."

Call for coordinated action across Europe

In another paper in press for the Series, maternal vaccination policies were mapped across all 53 countries in the World Health Organization (WHO) European Region and reviewed 163 studies and policy sources.

Common factors associated with higher uptake include when vaccines are free at the point of care, offered as part of routine antenatal services, delivered by healthcare professionals with clear responsibility for recommending and administering vaccines, and supported by robust monitoring systems.

However, barriers including additional appointments, language difficulties, fragmented services and inconsistent recommendations continue to limit access for some women and families.

Experts highlight evidence of persistent inequalities in maternal vaccine uptake and say that coverage should be routinely monitored by factors including deprivation, ethnicity and migration status so that underserved communities are not left behind as new programmes are introduced.

As new maternal vaccines are introduced, the Series shines a light on the importance of robust surveillance systems. A review accepted for publication of maternal pertussis vaccination programmes across seven European countries found substantial differences in how disease burden, vaccine uptake and programme impact are monitored. Researchers argue that stronger and more consistent surveillance systems will be essential as maternal immunisation programmes expand, helping policymakers understand vaccine effectiveness, safety and emerging inequalities.

‘The Future of Maternal Vaccination’ Series therefore calls for:

• maternal vaccination to become a routine component of antenatal care across Europe
• stronger monitoring of vaccine uptake, safety and inequalities
• better integration of maternity and immunisation records
• improved support for underserved communities
• coordinated preparation for future maternal vaccine programmes
• establishment of a European coordination group for maternal vaccine rollout
• development of a European Maternal Immunisation Preparedness Plan.

Strengthening vaccine safety assessment

Another focus of the Series is on vaccine safety assessment during pregnancy. It explores the WHO's new causality assessment approach, which is designed to help assess whether a health event in pregnancy occurring after vaccination may be related to vaccination or has another explanation.

Consistent assessment is essential for identifying potential safety signals and providing clear, trustworthy information to families.

Miscarriage, preterm birth and hypertensive disorders can occur during pregnancy regardless of vaccination status, and an event occurring after vaccination does not by itself establish that the vaccine caused it.

The authors note that structured safety assessment should complement wider surveillance systems, clinical studies and pregnancy registries as maternal vaccination programmes expand.

Closing evidence gap in pregnancy research

The Series also highlights continuing challenges in generating evidence during pregnancy.

A review of vaccine research found that almost 95% of late-stage vaccine trials conducted between 2018 and 2023 explicitly excluded pregnant participants, limiting the availability of evidence directly relevant to pregnancy.

The Series supports greater inclusion of pregnant women in research, alongside robust systems for evaluating vaccine safety during pregnancy and monitoring outcomes for mothers and babies.

Professor Asma Khalil added:

"The evidence is clear that maternal vaccination can save lives and reduce serious illness in mothers and babies. Our challenge now is ensuring that these benefits reach all families, regardless of where they live or their circumstances. Achieving that will require coordinated action across health services, public health agencies and policymakers."

ENDS

For more information or to request interviews please contact: Dr Lisa Jones, Press & Research Communications Manager at City St George’s, University of London, by email, ljones@citystgeorges.ac.uk or phone, +44 (0)7909 523089.

Notes to editors

About the Series

The Series is being launched on Thursday 8th October 2026 at the 2026 Global Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine Congress in Utrecht. The RSV effectiveness paper, accompanying editorial and podcast will be available at launch, with the remaining accepted Series papers in press that will be published subsequently by The Lancet Regional Health - Europe.

The Series was chaired by Professor Asma Khalil, Professor of Obstetrics and Maternal Fetal Medicine at City St George's, University of London and Consultant Obstetrician.

 

About City St George’s, University of London

City St George’s, University of London is the University of business, practice and the professions.

City St George’s attracts around 27,000 students from more than 170 countries.

Our academic range is broadly-based with world-leading strengths in business; law; health and medical sciences; mathematics; computer science; engineering; social sciences; and the arts including journalism, dance and music.

In August 2024, City, University of London merged with St George’s, University of London creating a powerful multi-faculty institution. The combined university is now one of the largest suppliers of the health workforce in the capital, as well as one of the largest higher education destinations for London students.

City St George’s campuses are spread across London in Clerkenwell, Moorgate and Tooting, where we share a clinical environment with a major London teaching hospital.

Our students are at the heart of everything that we do, and we are committed to supporting them to go out and get good jobs.

Our research is impactful, engaged and at the frontier of practice. In the last REF (2021) 86 per cent of City research was rated as ‘world-leading’ 4* (40%) and ‘internationally excellent’ 3* (46%) and 100 per cent of St George’s impact case studies were judged as ‘world-leading’ or ‘internationally excellent’. As City St George’s we will seize the opportunity to carry out interdisciplinary research which will have positive impact on the world around us.

 

The world’s oyster reefs could add $12 trillion to planetary health each year – if they were better managed

Restored and protected, oyster reefs could deliver ecosystem services worth trillions to human wellbeing and the global economy

Frontiers

MessageWhatsAppEmail

A new study shows that the world’s oyster reefs are a precious resource that’s vastly underestimated and underutilized. The authors set out to calculate the reefs’ potential gross ecosystem product (GEP), the ecological counterpart of the gross economic product, and arrived at trillions of dollars of ecosystem goods and services delivered each year to different aspects of planetary health, including human wellbeing. But for their full potential to be realized, oyster reefs around the world will need to be restored and protected.

“Here we estimate that fully restored oyster reefs in the top ten hotspot countries worldwide would yield a GEP of $12 trillion,” said Dr Matteo Convertino, an associate professor at Tsinghua University and the corresponding author of the publication in Frontiers in Marine Science.

The UN’s Sustainable Development Goal ‘Life below water’ calls for the conservation and sustainable use of coastal and marine resources to safeguard human wellbeing. But today, oyster reefs — like all coastal ecosystems — are under growing pressure from overexploitation, pollution, and climate change. Worldwide, an estimated 85% of such reefs have been lost over the past century, especially in estuaries and river deltas.

More than just food

Convertino and colleagues began by assessing where suitable habitats for oyster reefs exist around the world today and where reefs could spontaneously form, given the right protection and interventions for restoration. They then estimated the potential value of the entire ‘portfolio’ of ecosystem services these reefs could deliver. Besides oysters for human consumption, these include water filtration, shoreline protection, the recycling of nutrients through the food web, and carbon sequestration. Oyster reefs also provide food, shelter, and nursery grounds for a plethora of fish and invertebrates.

The scientists imported thousands of geotagged records of oyster reefs from two public databases. They then used a tried-and-tested machine learning algorithm to predict geographic distributions and habitat suitability around the world, and identify potential new locations for reefs. Their estimate of suitability weighed a slew of environmental measures such as local water temperature, salinity, light, nutrient-richness, and oxygenation. Any location with a habitat suitability score of 65% or greater was classified as suitable. By combining a given area’s score with a measure of the ecosystem services that a reef there could provide, the authors rated the ‘ecopotential’ of each location. The higher the ecopotential, the greater the potential benefit.

The results showed that the predicted ecopotential is greatest in ten ‘hotspot nations’: the US, Australia, Chile, China, Japan, South Korea, Argentina, France, Germany, and Italy. Across these countries, approximately 295,000 square kilometers, or 6% of their coastal zones, were deemed to be suitable. Oyster reefs are currently known to occupy only 10% of this area, mainly in lagoons and bays, estuaries, and river deltas: this indicates that there is a lot of room for expansion. Importantly, only 23% of the suitable area is currently under any form of marine protection.

Given adequate protection, the world’s your oyster

If the entire area with positive ecopotential were occupied by reefs, the authors’ calculations show that these could filter prodigious volumes of water: 77.58 quadrillion liters in the US, 69.92 quadrillion liters in Australia, and 46.58 quadrillion liters in Chile. These reefs could also sequester as much as 12.3 million metric tons of carbon a year. In the US alone, the combined potential value of nitrogen removal, carbon sequestration, and water purification by oyster reefs was estimated at $25.1 billion a year.

However, the authors stressed that these are estimates, which infer ecosystem services from global averages of key parameters, and which could be affected by changes in oyster populations over time or by the climate crisis. Significant work on habitat restoration and protection would also be needed to unlock reefs’ potential.

“We estimated that 90% of sites suitable for oyster reefs require restoration, while 80% need protection through conservation efforts. In other words, the current oyster situation is very suboptimal but there is a huge opportunity, considering the benefits,” said Convertino.

“Because global warming generally decreases the habitat quality of oyster reefs, we expect that their global GEP will go down from the current potential value of $12 trillion. But some countries may see an expansion of reefs due to more favorable conditions for the growth and dispersal of oysters: in particular this could happen in Australia, Indonesia, South Korea, Japan, and France.”

---

Journal

Frontiers in Marine Science

DOI

10.3389/fmars.2026.1900813

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

The gross ecosystem product of oyster reefs

Article Publication Date

7-Oct-2026

 

Plants, people and progress for native prairie seeds

SDSU scientists take a look at the people and relationships behind native seed networks

South Dakota State University

Facebook

XLinkedInWeChatEmail

image: 

Efforts to restore prairies and return native plants to the landscape are ongoing across much of the central United States, but little was understood about the social aspects of the native seed systems supporting this work.  A group of South Dakota State University researchers have published the results from their first-of-its-kind study looking at the people behind the native seeds.

view more 

Credit: Elena Friedman

Across much of the central United States there are ongoing efforts to restore native prairie. Returning native plants to the landscape can improve soil health, water quality and provide habitat for important wildlife and pollinators. Native seeds are a foundational part of this restoration work, but having enough of the right seeds requires a network of people who collect, grow and sell them.

To support restoration efforts in the Northern Great Plains region, a group of researchers from the Native Plant Initiative at South Dakota State University sought to understand how their native seed system worked and to identify ways they could support the existing networks.

“Native seed systems often have ecological, production or technological challenges,” said Jennifer Zavaleta Cheek, assistant professor in the SDSU Department of Natural Resource Management. “We used social science and resilience and systems thinking to understand the people and relationships that make restoration possible. That allowed us to look not only at questions like seed infrastructure and production, but also at how culture, values, knowledge, relationships, institutions and economics shape the resilience of the system.”

An article about this first-of-its-kind deep dive into the social aspects of native seed systems was recently published in People and Nature, a journal that focuses on the relationships between people and the natural world and a perfect fit for the study.

Guiding the work from the beginning was the Native Seed Strategy developed by the Northern Great Plains Native Seed Partnership. The plan identified a need to better understand the people and social dimensions of the native seed system in order to strengthen collaboration and restoration efforts and long-term resilience. There were many people involved in gathering information for the research including Elena Friedman, first author and August 2026 master’s program graduate and Lora Perkins director of the Native Plant Initiative at SDSU. To get a better understanding of the system, the team conducted 60 detailed interviews with people involved in different facets of the network. These interviews revealed that the system itself was much more complex than they initially thought.

“One of the most important, and surprising, findings was that there isn't just one native seed system per region,” Zavaleta Cheek said. “We went into the research thinking there was a singular system, but instead we found distinct seed systems operating in the same region, with different people, relationships and goals.”

Two of the distinct seed networks they found were commercial and Tribal. Participants in the commercial network focused on collecting, producing, selling and using seeds for restoration. While ecological restoration was one of the goals of the Tribal system, participants often took a more community-based approach. They also use seeds for food and medicine and an important factor for them was considering the significance of native seeds in promoting reciprocity and sovereignty.  Previous research that didn’t include a deep understanding of each group’s goals, practices and connections to native seeds may have determined that integrating the two systems would benefit both by increasing production. That potential misunderstanding emphasizes the importance of the current work.

“This is why we approached the native seed system as a social-ecological system,” said Zavaleta Cheek. “Building resilience isn't only about having enough seed or the right infrastructure. It is also about strengthening the relationships, knowledge, values and institutions that allow people and native landscapes to thrive together over time.”

Like the native seed network the research is based on, the next steps of the work has two different avenues. The researchers will continue working toward a better understanding of the relationship between people, native plants and resilient landscapes, with an additional focus on wild foods and the role they play in shaping resilient food systems. They also, with the support of the Native Plant Initiative, hope to work with specialty crop farmers to produce native seed to increase the production capacity and supply for restoration projects.

Regardless of where someone is in the native seed system, even for those outside the network entirely, the research team hopes to share the message of their findings with everyone.

“One takeaway I hope people have from our work is that plants and landscapes are cultural,” Zavaleta Cheek said. “What we expect a landscape to look like, which plants we value and what we consider productive or worth restoring are shaped by our culture and our relationships with those landscapes. Those values can ultimately influence what we choose to conserve and restore. I want to better understand how we can sustain and restore these landscapes, and the native plants that make them what they are, for future generations.”

The SDSU Department of Natural Resource Management is within the SDSU College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences. In addition to Zavaleta Cheek and Perkins, Lauren Redmore, conservation social scientist for the U.S. Forest Service is an author on the linked publication.

Native seed systems have often been studied from an ecological or production standpoint, but recently published research from South Dakota State University used social science and systems thinking to better understand the people and relationships that support the system.

Credit

Elena Friedman

---

Journal

People and Nature

DOI

10.1002/pan3.70434

Method of Research

Survey

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Resilience for Restoration: Insights from the Northern Great Plains Native Seed System

Article Publication Date

7-Oct-2026

 

Orangutan mothers seek out playmates for young

Mothers of the most solitary great ape plan and structure playdates, even when it comes at a cost

Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior

Facebook

XLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

video: 

Social play between two-year-old female Moby and three year old female Jane, mother Mindy on the right is watching closely.

view more 

Credit: Tuanan Orangutan Research Project/UZH

Playing with peers is a crucial part of growing up; so crucial, that orangutan mothers will go out of their way to arrange playdates for their young, according to a 15-year study on wild Bornean orangutans published in PNAS.

Orangutans are the most solitary of all great apes. Mothers spend most of their time alone with their youngest offspring, who remain dependent for their first seven or more years of life. Infants have little opportunity to meet youngsters their own age, yet playing together helps to build the strength and social skills that they need later in life.

Now scientists have strong evidence that orangutan mothers look for opportunities for their young to play with similarly aged playmates, even travelling further to do so.

“We reveal a hidden cost of solitary living,” says Dr. Maria van Noordwijk, senior author of the study. “On top of providing food and safety for their young, orangutan mothers are tasked with supplying social resources too.”

The study was led by scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior (MPI-AB) together with the University of Zurich, Universitas Nasional, and Rutgers University.

A longstanding mystery

Since 2003, van Noordwijk and her team have followed mother-infant pairs at Tuanan Research Station on the island of Borneo in Indonesia, where they observed habituated orangutans from morning to night. Encounters between mothers are rare, but when they do happen, they’re a cautious affair.

“Adults usually don’t get very close to each other,” says van Noordwijk, a fellow at MPI-AB, who led the fieldwork while at University of Zurich. Infants, though, are a different matter. “They zoom towards each other, roughhousing, biting, grappling,” she says. “Orangutan kids have a ‘play button’ that only mom can switch off when she decides it’s time to move on.”

Van Noordwijk noticed that these infant encounters seemed to come at a cost to the mothers. “It just looked like a really long, hard day for them,” she says. “I knew there was something going on with these playdays, but we needed the right statistical technique to verify this.”

Playdates with peers

After 15 years, van Noordwijk’s team had amassed 32,000 hours of observations from 31 mother-infant pairs. Working with Dr. Odd Jacobson, a postdoctoral researcher at MPIA-AB, she tested whether mothers were actively seeking out playmates for their young. “We applied a statistical technique that combined mothers’ space use with social characteristics of neighboring mother-infant pairs,” says Jacobson, the paper’s first author.

Jacobson found that mothers with infants closer in age shared more of the same forest areas, and those infants also played together more often, even after accounting for factors such as relatedness and fruit availability.  “Mothers appear to match their kids with play partners that are physically and developmentally suitable,” says Jacobson.

Playdates also carried a clear movement signature. Mothers travelled further not only on play days themselves, but also on the days surrounding play. Adult females are known to have a core area, where they spend most of their time. Starting on the day before play, mothers moved toward the other mother’s core area; and after play, they moved back toward their own core area. These patterns suggest that orangutan playdates are not chance meetings, but are actively shaped by mothers’ ranging decisions.

Mapping the social landscape

“To find a suitable playmate it seems that they position themselves spatially to increase the likelihood of encountering mothers with similarly-aged offspring,” says Jacobson. This targeted movement illustrates that mothers are aware of what van Noordwijk calls the “forest gossip.”

“Orangutans might spend most of their day alone, but they are still embedded in a social network. They know exactly who their mostly life-long neighbors are, and they know who had a baby when. From their treetop positions they can probably get a rough sense of where these neighbors are, at least on occasion.”

The ability to navigate this social landscape may draw on known cognitive skills of orangutans. “We have accepted for a long time that they apply spatial navigation and route planning to locate and access food resources,” says van Noordwijk. “Now we show that they are combining a cognitive map of not only feeding but also social resources in order to provide for their young.”

Mothers pay the price

All this effort comes at a cost. Mothers spent more time travelling and less time feeding on days associated with playdates, representing an overlooked form of maternal investment in their offspring's social development.

“In many social species, playmates come naturally with group living,” says Jacobson. “The play problem arises when moms spend most of their time alone with a single young and don’t regularly come together for feeding, socializing, or protection.” How many other species face this same problem, and how they solve it, remains unknown.

The authors acknowledge that playdates are rare, occurring on just 6% of the days that a mother-infant pair was followed, or roughly once every 20 days. And on days when infant peer play did occur, they spent only around 20 minutes doing so in total.

Whether that investment ultimately pays off remains an open question. “We still don’t know if the time and energy mothers spend arranging playdates give their young an advantage later in life,” says Dr. Sri Suci Utami Atmoko, coauthor from Universitas Nasional, Indonesia. “What is certain is that only long-term studies like these can possibly unlock the answer. Discoveries like this depend on sustained research, allowing us to connect behavior with development, environment, and demography across the lifespan of these long-lived species.”

The findings also raise a broader question: what do we gain from living socially, and what do we pay when social contact is scarce? Prof. Meg Crofoot, a coauthor and director at MPI-AB says: “In some ways, we are more like orangutans than we realize. We evolved to raise children in large groups, but modern life is increasingly pushing us into a solitary lifestyle. Orangutans remind us of what we lose when we isolate ourselves. When opportunities for social contact are limited, someone has to pay the cost.”

Social play Danum-Jip [VIDEO] | 

Social play Jane-Moby [VIDEO] 

Social play Jane-Moby-2 [VIDEO] 

Four-year-old infant carried by its mother during travel

Credit

Tuanan Orangutan Research Project/UZH

Seven-year-old female Milo playing with five-year- old male Jery. During such play-wrestling infants often hang upside down

Credit

Tuanan Orangutan Research Project - Mure Wipfli/UZH

---

Journal

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2621225123

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Maternal ranging strategies facilitate offspring social play at energetic cost in the most solitary ape

Article Publication Date

6-Oct-2026

 

Polymer-coated particles bring uranium into focus for portable detection

Maximum Academic Press

FacebookX

BlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

image: 

Schematic representation of the synthesis and detection process of the FA@tPF nanocomposite.

view more 

Credit: Sustainable Carbon Materials

A research team has developed a reusable magnetic sensor that detects trace amounts of uranyl ions, a mobile form of uranium, in water. The sensor captures the ions near gold nanoparticles, where their Raman signal becomes easier to measure. In tests, it detected uranyl at concentrations as low as 1×10-7 moles per liter after 20 minutes of enrichment, remained selective in the presence of several other dissolved ions, and could be used repeatedly. Paired with machine learning, the approach could support faster, more practical monitoring around nuclear and environmental sites.

Uranium monitoring is essential for managing nuclear materials and assessing contamination in aquatic environments. Established analytical methods can measure uranium accurately, but they often require costly instruments, extensive sample preparation, and trained operators. Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) offers a way to identify substances through their molecular “fingerprints” using potentially portable equipment. Its performance, however, depends on whether the sensing surface can reliably capture sparse uranyl ions and produce a strong signal, even when other substances are present. A surface that loses effectiveness after one use also increases the effort and cost of repeated monitoring.

A study (DOI:10.48130/scm-0026-0023) published in Sustainable Carbon Materials on 27 July 2026 by Zhenli Sun's team, North China Electric Power University, reports a regenerable sensor that concentrates uranyl ions for Raman measurement and supports automated identification of their spectral signature.
​​​​​​​
To build the sensor, the team coated magnetic iron oxide particles with silica and attached gold nanoparticles to their surfaces. They then added a covalent organic polymer layer, producing a material called FA@tPF. The magnetic core lets the particles be collected with a magnet; the polymer helps capture uranyl; and the gold nanoparticles amplify Raman signals from material brought close to their surfaces. Microscopy and chemical analyses confirmed the layered structure, while measurements showed that the finished particles retained their magnetic response. In a test using standard uranyl solutions, the researchers mixed the sensor with water, collected it magnetically, and measured its Raman spectrum with a portable instrument. A characteristic signal near 850 inverse centimeters remained detectable down to 1×10-7 moles per liter after 20 minutes. The signal also tracked concentration across the tested range from 1×10-7 to 1×10-4 moles per liter. By comparison, particles without the polymer layer produced no identifiable uranyl peak even at 1×10-4 moles per liter. A flow-cell experiment, designed to test enrichment from moving water, reached the same detection limit after 20 minutes. Common coexisting ions had little effect on the uranyl signal in the interference tests. The team also released captured uranyl using a sodium carbonate solution: the characteristic peak disappeared after cleaning and returned when the particles captured uranyl again. It remained detectable through six cycles, although its intensity declined slightly. Finally, the researchers analyzed the spectra with principal component analysis and a convolutional neural network. The model achieved 100% classification accuracy on the reported dataset, and an interpretation method showed that its decisions relied chiefly on the uranyl-associated peak near 850 inverse centimeters.

Together, the findings show how chemical capture, magnetic enrichment, Raman measurement, and spectral analysis can be combined in one reusable platform. The results point toward portable uranyl monitoring, while performance across a wider range of real environmental samples remains to be established.

###

References

DOI

10.48130/scm-0026-0023

Original Source URL

https://doi.org/10.48130/scm-0026-0023

Funding information

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. U21A20290).

About Sustainable Carbon Materials

Sustainable Carbon Materials (e-ISSN 3070-3557) is a multidisciplinary platform for communicating advances in fundamental and applied research on carbon-based materials. It is dedicated to serving as an innovative, efficient and professional platform for researchers in the field of carbon materials around the world to deliver findings from this rapidly expanding field of science. It is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal that publishes review, original research, invited review, rapid report, perspective, commentary and correspondence papers.

---

Journal

Sustainable Carbon Materials

DOI

10.48130/scm-0026-0023

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Reusable magnetic SERS platform functionalized with covalent organic polymers for trace-level and machine-learning-assisted uranyl detection