to abuse of antibiotics and secondary pollution. [2] In fact, most antibacterial materials may not have the proper mechanical, chemical, physical, and even biological properties required by practical applications. Moreover, addition of real-time bacteria monitoring to the antibacterial platform is highly desirable for biomedical engineering, aquaculture, agriculture, and environmental engineering as the complete process can be monitored. [3] Hence, biomaterials that can both sense and kill bacteria without deleterious effects are imperative to better healthcare and environmental research. However, little effort has so far been devoted to integrating sensors into one smart antibacterial platform which will otherwise shorten the detection-to-action time to fend off uncontrollable bacteria proliferation. In the case of bacteria detection, there are currently two types of techniques: ones requiring sample processing and systems targeting unprocessed samples but requiring complicated reactions. [4] The former techniques include counting of colony-forming units or the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) while the latter include biosensors based on antibodies, aptamers, and fluorescence. [5] Colony counting or PCR is time-consuming and laborious, whereas the currently available biosensors rely on biochemical interactions, require immobilization of the bio-reporter,

In the recent COVID-19 pandemic, World Health Organization emphasized that early detection is an effective strategy to reduce the spread of SARS-CoV-2 viruses. Several diagnostic methods, such as reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and lateral flow immunoassay (LFIA), have been applied based on the mechanism of specific recognition and binding of the probes to viruses or viral antigens. Although the remarkable progress, these methods still suffer from inadequate cellular materials or errors in the detection and sampling procedure of nasopharyngeal/oropharyngeal swab collection. Therefore, developing accurate, ultrafast, and visualized detection calls for more advanced materials and technology urgently to fight against the epidemic. In this review, we first summarize the current methodologies for SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis. Then, recent representative examples are introduced based on various output signals (e.g., colorimetric, fluorometric, electronic, acoustic). Finally, we discuss the limitations of the methods and provide our perspectives on priorities for future test development. Graphical Abstract

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Reducing membrane fouling using a nature-inspired approach: investigation of the effects of hydrophilicity and charge, separately and combined.