Warmest congratulations to the centennial birthday of Nankai Chemistry! During the founding of our new China, numerous serious pests such as locusts, rice planthopper, wheat rusts and epidemic diseases such as malaria, cholera, plague, parasites prevailing then were deadly fatal to our people. Regrettably we could not procure any effective chemicals then to combat with. To provide enough food to our people is always a paramount task. The president of Nankai University, the prestigious professor Yang Shi-Xian, selflessly rushed to organize a team of young teachers to develop an organo-phosphorus insecticide urgently then demanded on the market. Owing to the strong need of our nation along with professional Yang's personal expertise and charisma, and above all our beloved Chairman Mao Ze-Tong's historic visit to inspect a simple manufacturing device of organo-phosphrus insecticide in our Chemistry Department, thus Nankai's pesticide chemistry emerged as the times required. To meet the future demand of experts in China in this new area, Nankai Chemistry has since started a program to educate students in the science and technology in plant protection. With the firm support from organic chemistry discipline, Nankai pesticide chemistry has a distinctive characteristic of inter-disciplinary which feedbacks to organic chemistry to broaden its view and research area. Hereby we want to express our sincere thanks and cordial salutes to all the predecessors and pioneers. devoted to the establishment of this new discipline of pesticide chemistry on our campus.

The polymer science of Nankai University was founded by Professor HE Binglin, the academician of the Chinese Academy of Science. The macroporous anion exchange resin developed by Prof. He was successfully used to separate and enrich the radioactive element uranium, which made an important contribution to the nuclear industry in China. The researchers of polymer science inherit and carry forward the spirit of the older generation of scientists, focus on the development of ion exchange resin and its application in environmental protection, biomedical resin and other aspects, and have created remarkable economic and social benefits. In this paper, the applications of adsorbed resins in biomedical field are briefly reviewed.

Secondary batteries are widely used in many fields as the promising energy-storage devices. The working mechanism and research status of several secondary metal ion batteries were reviewed. The perspective of advanced energy storage technology was also discussed.

This year is the 100th anniversary of the founding of chemistry at Nankai University. As an important branch of Nankai chemistry, the analytical chemistry at Nankai University was founded in 1952. In this paper, we first introduce the history, achievements, and development of analytical chemistry at Nankai University. We further put forward the future development direction of our discipline based on the major requirement of the country. This paper is dedicated to the Nankai people in the history of Nankai University who have made contributions to the development of analytical chemistry as well as the friends who have supported and helped the development of the discipline all the time. Finally, this paper pays tribute to the 100th anniversary of the founding of chemistry at Nankai University.

This review focuses on recent advances in hydrogenation of carbon dioxide. Catalysts systems, reaction conditions, and catalytic performance were discussed to provide reference for further investigations on this area.

Nankai Chemistry has a long history, abundant qualified professors, outstanding courses, excellent teaching conditions and a strong atmosphere of innovation. In recent years, a series of reforms and explorations have been carried out in terms of teaching team construction, curriculum construction, innovation ability training, internationalization, etc., and distinctive characteristics of professional talent training have been formed. In 2017, it was selected into the “Double First-Rate” project and the First Batch of National First-Class Undergraduate Majors. In 2019, it was selected into the National Initiative on Top-Notch Student Cultivation in Math and Science. In 2020, it was selected into the national“Project of Elite Students Cultivation for Fundamental Disciplines 2.0”and the Strengthening basic disciplines program. Nankai Chemistry has long adhered to the core of talent training and is a high-level chemistry teaching base with important influence.

College of chemistry of Nankai University and college of chemical engineering of Tianjin University make use of their own advantages and characteristics to establish the specialty of “Molecular Science and Engineering” in accordance with the requirements of “independent organizing, close cooperation” and the principle of “high starting point, high standard, creating characteristics and building first class”. The two universities recruit 30 people each year equipped with superior teaching staff. In the first two years, they study in Nankai University, and in the second two years, they are taught and trained in Tianjin University. When they graduate, they are awarded double bachelor's degrees in both science and engineering. They are trained to meet the needs of national development, have a broad and profound foundation in both chemistry and chemical engineering. The students majoring in “Molecular Science and Engineering” have both science and engineering background, solid theoretical foundation, strong practical innovation ability, broad employment prospects, and are generally praised by employing units. In 2020, “Molecular Science and Engineering” has been selected as the national first-class specialty construction site, which has become the professional benchmark for the cultivation of interdisciplinary talents.

Developing new energy and realizing clean energy utilization is the fundamental way to solve the energy problem and fulfill the promise of “carbon neutral”. At present, there is a shortage of professionals in the new energy industry, and the scale of talent cultivation is not sufficient for the demand of “made in China, created in China”. Facing the national strategic needs, the New Energy Science and Engineering Special Class was established at Nankai University. By integrating the faculty of chemistry and electro-optics, optimizing the professional curriculum and improving the practical training system, we will promote the extension of applied science to engineering and facilitate the construction of the emerging engineering system. The special class adopts the tutorial system, personalized and international training mode in small classes to cultivate talents with solid theoretical foundation and strong practical and innovative ability in scientific research, technology development and engineering application in the field of clean energy.

Nankai University is one of the earliest universities in China to establish the discipline of chemical biology and carry out talent cultivation in chemical biology on both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. The College of Chemistry, Nankai University began to recruit undergraduates majoring in chemical biology in 2012, and has trained 98 graduates so far. We have accumulated experience in the talent cultivation and achieved fruitful results. This article introduces the general information, curriculum setting, training characteristics and objectives, and educational effect of bachelor degree program in chemical biology in College of Chemistry, Nankai University.

Under the background of “Emerging Engineering Education” represented by advanced materials, new energy and novel technologies, the trend of mutual penetration, mutual intersection and integration among different disciplines is emerging. In view of this, the concept of “Emerging Engineering Education” is regarded as the “catalyst” for the construction of the applied chemistry major of Nankai University. As a result, many strategies in the construction of teaching staff, curriculum setting, teaching practice and talent training were actively explored and practiced in order to cultivate high-quality application-oriented, innovative and compound talents in applied chemistry.

The shaping of positive life values and the adjustment of life and learning mode are of great importance to the freshmen. As the first professional course of chemistry and related majors in Nankai University, “General Chemistry” aims at moral education and growth leading. During the class session, patriotism and the concept of serving the society were infused. By adjusting the knowledge structure, improving and updating the teaching methods, and reforming assessment modes, the students' interests in chemistry was stimulated, their knowledge structure was enriched and deepened, and growth leading was performed. The educational function of first-class courses in higher education could realize consequently. We expected our teaching reform and exploration of the course “General Chemistry” can provide reference for related professional courses in other universities.

The “Physical Chemistry” course of Nankai University has excellent historical inheritance and accumulation. In recent years, in accordance with the spirit of the Ministry of Education's first-class undergraduate course construction, and in terms of the teaching challenges of the course's strong theoretical and abstract conception, various measures have been taken to establish a “four combinations” stereoscopic teaching mode: the combination of teaching materials with exercise guidance; the combination of classroom teaching with video resources; the combination of teacher lectures with student discussions; the combination of basic knowledge with scientific frontiers. It has significant effects in improving students' learning initiative, learning effect, cultivating students' critical thinking and innovative consciousness.

Comprehensive chemistry experiment is an experiment course for senior students major in chemistry. With the continuous development, comprehensive chemistry experiment course has gradually become an innovative experiment course with novel and diverse teaching methods and multi-level teaching contents, which effectively help students to integrate experimental theories, improve chemistry-related experimental skills, and build up the ability to analyze and solve chemistry-related scientific problems. This article summarizes the practice in the development of the comprehensive chemistry experiment course, especially in teaching design, teaching contents and teaching methods, and discusses the future strategies in the development of the course.

The first-class curriculum construction of fundamental chemistry experiment is introduced from the reform of teaching group, curriculum content, teaching modes, teaching conditions, and evaluation system. In particular, the teaching group was constructed by teaching and training, communicating and cooperating, and breaking down the establishment barrier; the curriculum content was reformed by scientific research feedback teaching, contest, and textbook compiling; the innovative thinking and scientific research ability of the college students was developing by the novel teaching modes such as “teaching one, practicing two and testing three”, “practical blended teaching”, and “thought experiment”; the teaching conditions were promoted by applying advanced instruments and information technology; and the evaluation system was reformed by the expert evaluation & student assessment, and the implementation of charming chemistry experiment class.

Based on the characteristics of the first-class course construction, relying on first-class course online, offline classroom and online learning are integrated and connected to complement each other. The teaching methods such as thematic guidance, flipped classroom, discussion and exchange, the learning report, the communication between teachers and students, encourage questions in class and so on are used to solve the problems of disconnection between theory with practice and their own, students' independent thinking and active questioning. Breaking through the examination paper score evaluation of memorized knowledge points, we try out the integral assessment and evaluation of students' participation in the whole process and explore the path of constructing the mixed online and offline flipped first-class courses.

It reviewed the course of the physical chemistry course group of the College of Chemistry of Nankai University to keep up with the times and build high-level physical chemistry textbooks. Continuously integrate scientific research, teaching research, teaching reform results and ideological and political construction into teaching materials. The edited and published physical chemistry textbook won the first prize of the 2009 National Teaching Achievement Award, Excellent textbook for ideological and political courses in Tianjin colleges and universities in 2021. It will continue to carry forward the fine traditions of Nankai Chemistry and pass on the construction of physical chemistry textbooks from generation to generation.

Instrumental analysis course is the major compulsory course in most universities, and is the eyes of the scientific researches. As a foundation and ladder course that sees the essence through the phenomenon, instrumental analysis involves chemistry, physics, mathematics, computer automation and other fields, embodies the overall thought view and methodology of multi-discipline crossing, and is a key link of talent training. The pain points in teaching-and-learning of the course are as follows: the knowledge points are trivial and complicated, the connection between each chapter is not so close, the teaching-and-learning will inevitably appear boring feeling, the instrument principle and structure are abstract and difficult to understand, there is a big gap between the course knowledge and the flexible application, and the evaluation method of teaching-and-learning is limited. To resolve those problems, we design and practice the teaching-and-learning mainly through the innovations in content and methods of teaching-and-learning, enrich the content and resources of the course, improve the innovation, advanced and challenging degree of the course. We use the P-MASE (Problem-Method-Analysis-Solution-Evaluation), and O-AMAS (Objective-Actication-Multilearning-Assessment-Summary) modes to practice many kinds of teaching-and-learning activities, and comprehensively integrate the knowledge acquisition, capability promotion and emotional nourishment.

In the courses such as general chemistry for the new students in university, it is difficult for students to understand professional terms and meaning of physics and chemistry without knowing the sources of these professional words. Taking words such as “enthalpy” and “entropy”, as well as abbreviations such as angular momentum l and energy level splitting unit “Dq” as examples, this paper starts from the source of professional terms, so that students can know both the nature and the reason in the process of learning, and better understand the professional terms of chemistry, especially the connotation and physical and chemical meaning of imported words.

The “I love laboratory” activity held by Science and Technology Innovation Association of Chemistry College of Nankai University for junior undergraduates aims to broaden students' professional knowledge field, make students understand the research frontier and cultivate students' scientific research literacy. Based on the research direction of the laboratory, students independently research literature topics, design the experimental process, participate in group meetings to communicate and solve problems. It not only improves students' experimental skills, but also broadens their knowledge field. More importantly, it cultivates and improves students' quality and ability of scientific research.

Based on the existing personnel structure and curriculum of computational chemistry in the college of chemistry, Nankai University, this paper expounds some explorations and attempts to construct an Introduction to Computational Chemistry course with the combination of theoretical basis and practical application with the mode of “diversified curriculum”, and the reform of teaching contents and teaching methods of computational chemistry was also discussed.

How to reform the teaching method and content of the instrumental analysis course for graduate students to improve the quality of teaching, the Central Laboratory of Nankai University has made a useful attempt. Take the chromatographic analysis experiment as an example; expand the space-time domain of theoretical learning through online courses for students; the combination of enriched experimental content and grouped experiments enhances students enthusiasm for learning and strengthens students practical training;experimental course arrangement driven by scientific research. The type of experimental course arrangement is more in line with the actual needs of students, strengthens students' awareness of active learning, and cultivates students' practical work ability. Teaching practice shows that the curriculum reform has received good results. The new teaching mode improves the practical ability of students, the learning of new instrument methods is helpful to the development of their scientific research and innovation work.

Acetohydroxyacid synthase (AHAS) is the target enzyme of several types of super-efficient commercial herbicides attracting great international attention. The mutation of key residues of AHAS is the source of herbicide resistance formation. The nature and function of wild type and two single-site mutants of AHAS were studied thoroughly from gene cloning and mutation, protein expression and purification, to enzyme assay. Many basic manipulation and several challenging design experiments were included in the whole experiment process, in which the comprehensive theory and operation of chemical biology were involved. The course will help the students in principle to understand the necessity of pesticide application, the cause of pesticide resistance, design and development of new green pesticides from the perspective of molecular structure.

In the face of different grades of undergraduate and graduate students, an experimental teaching system of NMR has been designed with stepped gradients from easy to hard. Important analytical means of NMR are comprehensively introduced through experimental teaching, combined with new teaching modes such as online teaching and classroom interaction. Students' understanding of important knowledge points is deepened. Good teaching effect is achieved by organically combined with theoretical teaching.

Taking the recrystallization of acetanilide as an example, we introduce thought experiment into students' preview. By discussing the progressive problems designed in flipped class, we guide students to use materialist dialectics to carry out thought experiment and help them to think thoroughly before they do. Hence students might avoid common mistakes when they practice. These teaching efforts achieve positive results.

The issue of conformations interconvert in cyclohexane is important in stereochemistry for organic chemistry teaching. Although many Chinese and English textbooks describe that there are five coplanar carbon half-chair conformers in cyclohexane conformations interconvert, this description is lack of theoretical and experimental evidence. We suggest that four coplanar carbon structure should be used to describe the conformation interconvert process of cyclohexane. The four coplanar carbon conformer is not only supported by theoretical calculation, but also conforms to the physicochemical principles of potential energy surface. Unfortunately, only few textbooks use the proper expression at present.

The surface tension and the conductivity methods were used to determine and compare critical micelle concentrations of anionic surfactant sodium dodecyl sulfate and nonionic p-octyl polyethylene glycol phenyl ether solutions. The surface tension of two surfactants solutions with different concentrations were measured by hanging ring method. The saturated adsorption capacity, critical micelle concentration and molecular cross section area were obtained. The conductivity curves of the above two solutions were studied by conductance method, and the critical micelle concentration of the sodium dodecyl sulfate were only obtained. Compared with the conductance method, the surface tension method can get more information about the properties of surfactants and is more widely used. The experiment enables students to gain a better understanding of the nature of surfactant critical micelle concentration and the methods of measurement, to identify the advantages and disadvantages of different methods, and to broaden their knowledge. This will lay a good foundation of further study and application of surfactants for students in the future.

This article introduces a comprehensive organic chemistry experiment which carried out in College of Chemistry, Nankai University. In this experiment, N-benzyl maleimide was employed as the reactant, and tri-molecule tandem cyclization reaction occurred under the catalysis of tributyl phosphine to generate N-benzyl maleimide trimer. The structure of the product is characterized by ¹H NMR, ¹³C NMR and X-ray single crystal diffraction. The organic chemistry comprehensive experiment not only effectively improves the students' basic experimental operation ability and consolidates the understanding of professional knowledge, but also helps cultivate students' rigorous scientific attitude and interest in scientific research and lays a solid foundation for subsequent learning and further studies.

Large-scale instruments and equipments are the core force for universities to lead original innovation and technological progress. In the new era,it is an innovative measure for universities to carry out science popularization education and serve the society to excavate the connotation of science popularization of large instruments. This paper expounds the practical significance of carrying out popular science education with large instruments, and analyzes the realization way of carrying out popular science education with large instruments. It takes electron microscope as an example to explore the feasibility of carrying out popular science education with large instruments.

Chemistry is closely related to human life, production and social development, but there are many misunderstandings about chemistry in society. As the main position of spreading knowledge and training talents, colleges and universities also bear the responsibility of science popularization education. Relying on the high-quality educational resources and teaching staff of Nankai chemistry, Nankai University Chemical Science Popularization base has built a chemical science popularization base with the characteristics of Nankai chemistry, which has made a positive exploration for popularizing chemical knowledge and improving teenagers' chemical literacy.