Zinc (Zn) holds great promise as a desirable anode material for next‐generation rechargeable batteries. However, the uncontrollable dendrite growth and low coulombic efficiency of the Zn plating/stripping process severely impede further practical applications of Zn‐based batteries. Here, these roadblocks are removed by using in situ grown zeolitic imidazolate framework‐8 (ZIF‐8) as the ion modulation layer to tune the diffusion behavior of Zn 2+ ions on Zn anodes. The well‐ordered nanochannels and N species of ZIF‐8 can effectively homogenize Zn 2+ flux distribution and modulate the plating/stripping rate, ensuring uniform Zn deposition without dendrite growth. The Zn corrosion and hydrogen evolution are also alleviated by the insulating nature of ZIF‐8, resulting in high coulombic efficiency. Therefore, the Zn@ZIF anode shows highly reversible, dendrite‐free Zn plating/stripping behavior under a broad range of current densities, and a symmetric cell using this anode can work correctly up to 1200 h with a low polarization at 2 mA cm −2 . Moreover, this ultrastable Zn@ZIF anode also enables a full Zn ion battery with outstanding cyclic stability (10 000 cycles).

Exploring high‐efficiency, stable, and cost‐effective bifunctional electrocatalysts for overall water splitting is greatly desirable and challenging. Herein, a newly designed hybrid catalyst with Cr‐doped FeNi–P nanoparticles encapsulated into N‐doped carbon nanotubes (Cr‐doped FeNi–P/NCN) with unprecedented electrocatalytic activity is developed by a simple one‐step heating treatment. The as‐synthesized Cr‐doped FeNi–P/NCN with moderate Cr doping exhibits admirable oxygen evolution reaction and hydrogen evolution reaction activities with overpotentials of 240 and 190 mV to reach a current density of 10 mA cm−2 in 1 m KOH solution. When used in overall water splitting as a bifunctional catalyst, it needs only 1.50 V to give a current density of 10 mA cm−2, which is superior to its typically integrated Pt/C and RuO2 counterparts (1.54 V @ 10 mA cm−2). Density functional theory calculation confirms that Cr doping into a FeNi‐host can effectively alter the relative Gibbs adsorption energy and reduces the theoretical overpotential. Additionally, the synergetic effects between Cr‐doped FeNi–P nanoparticles and NCNs are regarded as significant contributors to accelerate charge transfer and promote electrocatalytic activity in hybrid catalysts.

This work is concerned with investigating the effect of substrate hydrophobicity and zeta potential on the dynamics and kinetics of the initial stages of bacterial adhesion. For this purpose, bacterial pathogens Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli O157:H7 were inoculated on the substrates coated with thin thiol layers (i.e., 1-octanethiol, 1-decanethiol, 1-octadecanethiol, 16-mercaptohexadecanoic acid, and 2-aminoethanethiol hydrochloride) with varying hydrophobicity and surface potential. The time-resolved adhesion data revealed a transformation from an exponential dependence to a square root dependence on time upon changing the substrate from hydrophobic or hydrophilic with a negative zeta potential value to hydrophilic with a negative zeta potential for both pathogens. The dewetting of extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) produced by E. coli O157:H7 was more noticeable on hydrophobic substrates, compared to that of S. aureus, which is attributed to the more amphiphilic nature of staphylococcal EPS. The interplay between the timescale of EPS dewetting and the inverse of the adhesion rate constant modulated the distribution of E. coli O157:H7 within microcolonies and the resultant microcolonial morphology on hydrophobic substrates. Observed trends in the formation of bacterial monolayers rather than multilayers and microcolonies rather than isolated and evenly spaced bacterial cells could be explained by a colloidal model considering van der Waals and electrostatic double-layer interactions only after introducing the contribution of elastic energy due to adhesion-induced deformations at intercellular and substrate-cell interfaces. The gained knowledge is significant in the context of identifying surfaces with greater risk of bacterial contamination and guiding the development of novel surfaces and coatings with superior bacterial antifouling characteristics.

Aqueous zinc batteries are promising in daily quick energy storage, but their commercialization is limited by the poor rate capability and low capacity of Zn-ion hosts, especially at practical-level mass...

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