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The food hygiene problems caused by bacterial biofilms in food processing equipment are directly related to human life safety and health. Therefore, it is of great strategic significance to study new food sterilization technology. An acidic electrolyzed water (AEW) disinfectant is an electrochemical sterilization technology which has the characteristics of wide adaptability, high efficiency, and environmental friendliness. However, since the sterilization efficiency of AEW for biofilms is not ideal, it is necessary to increase the available chlorine content (ACC) in AEW. A feasible method to increase the ACC is by increasing the chlorine evolution reaction (CER) selectivity of the electrode for AEW preparation. In this paper, the RuO 2 @TiO 2 electrode was prepared by thermal decomposition combined with high-vacuum magnetron sputtering. Compared with the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) activity of an ordinary RuO 2 electrode, the OER activity of the RuO 2 @TiO 2 electrode is significantly reduced. However, the CER activity of the RuO 2 @TiO 2 electrode is close to the OER activity of RuO 2 . The CER mechanism of the RuO 2 @TiO 2 electrode is the second electron transfer, and the OER mechanism is the formation and transformation of OH ads . The potential difference between the CER and OER of the RuO 2 @TiO 2 electrode is 174 mV, which is 65 mV higher than that of the RuO 2 electrode, so the selectivity of the CER of the RuO 2 @TiO 2 electrode is remarkably improved. During the preparation of AEW, the ACC obtained with the RuO 2 @TiO 2 electrode is 1.7 times that obtained with the RuO 2 electrode. In the sterilization experiments on Escherichia coli and Bacillus subtilis biofilms, the logarithmic killing values of AEW prepared the by RuO 2 @TiO 2 electrode are higher than those of AEW prepared by the RuO 2 electrode., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing financial interest., (© 2022 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society.)

Electrochemical water splitting technology is considered to be the most reliable method for converting renewable energy such as wind and solar energy into hydrogen. Here, a nanostructured RuO 2 /Co 3 O 4 -RuCo-EO electrode is designed via magnetron sputtering combined with electrochemical oxidation for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in an alkaline medium. The optimized RuO 2 /Co 3 O 4 -RuCo-EO electrode with a Ru loading of 0.064 mg cm -2 exhibits excellent electrocatalytic performance with a low overpotential of 220 mV at the current density of 10 mA cm -2 and a low Tafel slope of 59.9 mV dec -1 for the OER. Compared with RuO 2 prepared by thermal decomposition, its overpotential is reduced by 82 mV. Meanwhile, compared with RuO 2 prepared by magnetron sputtering, the overpotential is also reduced by 74 mV. Furthermore, compared with the RuO 2 /Ru with core-shell structure ( η = 244 mV), the overpotential is still decreased by 24 mV. Therefore, the RuO 2 /Co 3 O 4 -RuCo-EO electrode has excellent OER activity. There are two reasons for the improvement of the OER activity. On the one hand, the core-shell structure is conducive to electron transport, and on the other hand, the addition of Co adjusts the electronic structure of Ru., Competing Interests: There are no conflicts to declare., (This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry.)