Due to their outstanding properties, bioadhesive hydrogels have been extensively studied by researchers in recent years. By designing the properties of bioadhesive hydrogel, it can be reasonably applied to biomedicine....

Hydrogel is a polymer material with a porous network structure, which allows the hydrogel to swell rapidly underwater without dissolving. This unique property of hydrogels lays the foundation for its...

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Nitrate (NO 3À ) as a common pollutant of groundwater causes drinking water safety problems and seriously endangers people's health. Electrochemical reduction of nitrate to ammonia under ambient condition is a green and significant route to reduce the concentration of NO 3 À and produce ammonia (NH 3 ), known as a complement to the Haber-Bosch reaction. Currently, noble-metal electrocatalysts are often used in electrochemical reduction of NO 3À , but high cost and scarcity limited their application. Herein, three-dimensional (3D) flower-like zinc cobaltite (ZnCo 2 O 4 ) electrocatalyst was developed to convert nitrate into ammonia at room temperature. The NH 3 yield rate could reach up to around 2100 μg mg À 1 h À 1 at a potential of À 0.6 V vs. reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE), which was around 2.0 times higher than that of pristine Co 3 O 4 . In addition, the NH 3 faradaic efficiency of ZnCo 2 O 4 electrocatalyst could reach around 95.4 % at potential of À 0.4 V vs. RHE with good structural and morphological stability, which surpassed most reported non-noble metal-based electrocatalysts. Further studies concluded that the improved activity of electrocatalytic NO 3À reduction was ascribed to the existence of abundant active sites and the charge transfer from Co atoms to Zn atoms after Zn doping. Importantly, this work opens a new path for the development of Co-based materials as electrocatalysts for reducing nitrate to ammonia.

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Electrochemical carbon dioxide reduction reaction (CO 2 RR) using clean electric energy provides a sustainable route to generate highly-valuable chemicals and fuels, which is beneficial for realizing the carbon-neutral cycle. Up to now, achieving a narrow product distribution and highly targeted product selectivity over Cu-based electrocatalysts is still a big challenge. Herein, sulfur modification on different crystal planes of cuprous oxide (Cu 2 O) is demonstrated, results in an improvement for formate generation to different degrees. Experimental results and density functional theory (DFT) calculations reveal that sulfur species modified on the surface of Cu 2 O (100) facet effectively lower the formation energy of key intermediate *OCOH for formate generation compared with Cu 2 O (111) facet. As a consequence, the modification of p-Block elements over Cu-based electrocatalysts is an effective strategy to optimize the adsorption energy of key intermediate during CO 2 RR, leading to a highly selective product.

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