A facile solvothermal reduction strategy is demonstrated to introduce oxygen defects into ultrathin Co3O4 nanosheets (R–Co3O4), which function as an advanced cathode for Zn//Co batteries.

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Metallic zinc (Zn) for next-generation aqueous batteries often suffers from severe dendrite growth, unfavorable hydrogen evolution, and self-corrosion, especially in alkaline electrolyte. Herein, the authors demonstrate a facile and efficient strategy to tackle above issues by electrochemically depositing Zn onto the Cu-Zn alloy surface (CZ-Zn). The zincophilic Cu sites throughout the Cu-Zn alloy can remarkably enhance the Zn 2+ adsorption and promote homogeneous Zn nucleation on its surface, endowing it with highly reversible Zn plating/stripping chemistry. Furthermore, the intrinsically inert nature of Cu toward hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and high dezincification potential of the Cu-Zn alloy can effectively alleviate the hydrogen evolution and Zn corrosion in aqueous electrolyte. Consequently, the symmetric cells with the CZ-Zn electrodes exhibit outstanding cycling life in both alkaline and neutral electrolytes, which can operate steadily over 800 h and 1600 h at 2.5 mAh cm -2 , respectively, far surpassing the pristine Zn electrodes. In addition, a high-performance alkaline full battery with ultra-long cyclic stability (no capacity degradation after 5000 cycles) and excellent Coulombic efficiency (CE) (100%) is achieved by pairing this CZ-Zn anode with a Ni 3 S 2 @ polyaniline cathode. This study sheds light on the design of robust and ultra-stable Zn anodes for the state-of-art aqueous energy storage devices.

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Diabetes mellitus (DM) refers to a group of metabolic disorders that are characterized by hyperglycemia. Oral subcutaneously administered antidiabetic drugs such as insulin, glipalamide, and metformin can temporarily balance blood sugar levels, however, long‐term administration of these therapies is associated with undesirable side effects on the kidney and liver. In addition, due to overproduction of reactive oxygen species and hyperglycemia‐induced macrovascular system damage, diabetics have an increased risk of complications. Fortunately, recent advances in nanomaterials have provided new opportunities for diabetes therapy and diagnosis. This review provides a panoramic overview of the current nanomaterials for the detection of diabetic biomarkers and diabetes treatment. Apart from diabetic sensing mechanisms and antidiabetic activities, the applications of these bioengineered nanoparticles for preventing several diabetic complications are elucidated. This review provides an overall perspective in this field, including current challenges and future trends, which may be helpful in informing the development of novel nanomaterials with new functions and properties for diabetes diagnosis and therapy.

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The development of high-performance, low-cost carbon cathodes is desperately desired but remains challenging for further widespread application of aqueous Zn-ion hybrid supercapacitors (ZHSCs). Herein, we propose nitrogen-doped carbon materials derived from inexpensive industrial byproducts, pitch, as advanced ZHSCs cathodes. The nitrogen dopants significantly enhance the conductivity of pitch-derived carbon while the electrochemically active pyrrolic nitrogen substantially accelerates the reaction kinetics for energy storage and yields more pseudocapacitance via nitrogen redox mechanism. Consequently, the as-designed cathode shows satisfactory Zn ion storage ability as well as distinct anti self-discharge ability resulting. When assembled as a ZHSC device, the supercapacitor delivers a high capacity of 136.2 mA h g–1, excellent rate performance (50.8% capacity retention from 0.3 A g–1 to 15 A g–1) and satisfactory anti self-discharge ability (only 4.6% capacity loss after 24 h rest). This finding highlights the potential high-value utilization of industry byproducts and provides insight for understanding nitrogen redox chemistry in aqueous energy storage.