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Due to a threat to human life from heavy metal ions pollution, unprecedented interest has been gained in the development of water purification technologies. Here, we explore another new approach to exploit a prospective carbon material for removing copper ions from aqueous solution based on rapid and easy capacitive deionization (CDI). Reasonable carbon materials modification with ideal composition and improved morphological structure is essential to additionally optimize the capabilities of CDI. We prepared a nitrogen-rich hierarchically porous carbon composites (CoFe-NC) with uniform cobalt (Co) and iron (Fe) doped metal in carbon skeleton by a simple impregnation and pyrolysis method, derived from zeolitic imidazolate framework-8, to use as highly effective CDI electrode for copper ions removal. The addition of Fe can facilitate the uniform dispersion of metals, and enable the formation of a stable carbon cage after pyrolysis. It can sufficiently expose active sites of the electrode materials and promote interfacial charge transfer, thus improving CDI electrosorption efficiency. CoFe-NC composites electrode can achieve outstanding deionization capacity (91.31 mg g-1) in 25 mg L-1 CuSO4 solu-tion. The carbon cage structure of CoFe-NC not only prevents aggregation of metals and avoids destruction of rich multistage pore system by pyrolysis, but also induces a faster ions transport rate. In addition, density functional theory calculations demonstrated that the co-doping of Co and Fe can remarkably increase the adsorption en-ergies of Cu2+ ions, leading to excellent selectivity, which indicates that CoFe-NC composites can be a desired CDI electrode material., Funding Agencies|National Natural Science Foundation of China [51778156]; Talent Cultivation Program of Guangzhou University [YJ2021005]; Guangdong Natural Science Foundation [2022A1515010441]; "Basic Innovation" Project for Graduate Students of Guangzhou University [2022GDJC-M43]

Cathode electrocatalyst is quite critical to realize the application of microbial fuel cells (MFCs). Perovskite oxides have been considered as potential MFCs cathode catalysts to replace Pt/C. Herein, Cu-doped perovskite oxide with a stable porous structure and excellent conductivity was successfully prepared through a sol-gel method. Due to the incorporation of Cu, CaFe0.9Cu0.1O3 has more micropores and a larger surface area, which are more conducive to contact with oxygen. Doping Cu resulted in more Fe3+ in B-site and thus enhanced its binding capability to oxygen molecules. The data from electrochemical test demonstrated that the as-prepared catalyst has good conductivity, high stability, and excellent ORR properties. Compared with Pt/C catalyst, CaFe0.9Cu0.1O3 exhibits a lower overpotential, which had an onset potential of 0.195 V and a half-wave potential of 0.224 V, respectively. CaFe0.9Cu0.1O3 displays an outstanding four-electron pathway for ORR mechanism and demonstrates superiors corrosion resistance and stability. The MFC with CaFe0.9Cu0.1O3 has a greater maximum power density (1090 mW m(-3)) rather than that of Pt/C cathode (970 mW m(-3)). This work demonstrated CaFe0.9Cu0.1O3 is an economic and efficient cathodic catalyst for MFCs., Funding Agencies|National Natural Science Foundation [51208122, 51778156, 51708142, 22076034]; Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province, China [2021A1515010067, 2022A1515010441]; Talent Cultivation Program of Guangzhou University [YJ2021005]