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Lithium-sulfur batteries (LSBs) are promising candidates as next-generation secondary batteries due to their advantages with respect to cost and energy density. However, their practical application is hindered by their slow kinetics and the shuttle behavior of soluble polysulfide ions. Herein, we successfully prepared a three-dimensional porous conductive catalyst material with an atomic-level Ni–N 4 structure. The results showed that a strong adsorption of lithium polysulfides (LiPSs) by the Ni–N 4 catalytic active sites and a strong catalytic effect on the conversion of LiPSs in the sulfur reduction reaction (SRR) as well as the lithium sulfide oxidation reaction (SOR) were achieved, effectively inhibiting the shuttle effect of polysulfide ions and promoting the sulfur cathode kinetics process. Thus, the LSBs exhibited an excellent performance with a specific capacity of 829.8 mAh g–1 and an average coulombic efficiency of 98.8 % after 420 cycles at a high rate of 1 C. Our work provides new insights and novel efforts to solve the shuttle effect in LSBs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intracellular protein motors have evolved to perform specific tasks critical to the function of cells such as intracellular trafficking and cell division. Kinesin and dynein motors, for example, transport cargoes in living cells by walking along microtubules powered by adenosine triphosphate hydrolysis. These motors can make discrete 8 nm centre-of-mass steps and can travel over 1 µm by changing their conformations during the course of adenosine triphosphate binding, hydrolysis and product release. Inspired by such biological machines, synthetic analogues have been developed including self-assembled DNA walkers that can make stepwise movements on RNA/DNA substrates or can function as programmable assembly lines. Here, we show that motors based on RNA-cleaving DNA enzymes can transport nanoparticle cargoes-CdS nanocrystals in this case-along single-walled carbon nanotubes. Our motors extract chemical energy from RNA molecules decorated on the nanotubes and use that energy to fuel autonomous, processive walking through a series of conformational changes along the one-dimensional track. The walking is controllable and adapts to changes in the local environment, which allows us to remotely direct 'go' and 'stop' actions. The translocation of individual motors can be visualized in real time using the visible fluorescence of the cargo nanoparticle and the near-infared emission of the carbon-nanotube track. We observed unidirectional movements of the molecular motors over 3 µm with a translocation velocity on the order of 1 nm min−1 under our experimental conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]