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Developing low-cost, efficient alternatives to catalysts for bifunctional oxygen electrode catalysis in the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is critical for advancing the practical applications of alkaline fuel cells. In this study, Co particles and single atoms co-loaded on nitrogen-doped carbon (CoNC) were synthesized via pyrolysis of a C3N4 and cobalt nitrate mixture at varying temperatures (900, 950, and 1000 °C). The pyrolysis temperature and precursor ratios were found to significantly influence the ORR/OER performance of the resulting catalysts. The optimized CoNC-950 catalyst demonstrated exceptional ORR (E1/2 = 0.85 V) and OER (Ej10 = 320 mV) activities, surpassing commercial Pt/C + RuO2-based devices when used in a rechargeable zinc–air battery. This work presents an effective strategy for designing high-performance non-precious metal bifunctional electrocatalysts for alkaline environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AZO thin films with low surface roughness and low sheet resistance are required in the touch panels and display panels. In this work, we investigated the substrate cooling effect of the ion beam post-treatment on AZO films properties, and one new way to obtain low surface roughness and low sheet resistance at the same time was proposed. The more exciting find of this paper is that, compared to the samples without cooling during the process of the ion beam post-treatment, samples with proper cooling voltage show a sheet resistance decrease of 26 % (from 11.9 Ω/□ to 8.8 Ω/□) and a roughness decrease of 35.5 % (from 13.389 nm to 8.637 nm) without transparency losing. And the viewpoint that substrate cooling has the effect of weakening the crystallization, especially for the subface and internal parts of samples is deduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]