To understand the interaction mechanism between graphene oxide (GO) and typical phytopathogens, a particular investigation was conducted about the antimicrobial activity of GO against two bacterial pathogens (P. syringae and X. campestris pv. undulosa) and two fungal pathogens (F. graminearum and F. oxysporum). The results showed that GO had a powerful effect on the reproduction of all four pathogens (killed nearly 90% of the bacteria and repressed 80% macroconidia germination along with partial cell swelling and lysis at 500 μg mL⁻¹). A mutual mechanism is proposed in this work that GO intertwinds the bacteria and fungal spores with a wide range of aggregated graphene oxide sheets, resulting in the local perturbation of their cell membrane and inducing the decrease of the bacterial membrane potential and the leakage of electrolytes of fungal spores. It is likely that GO interacts with the pathogens by mechanically wrapping and locally damaging the cell membrane and finally causing cell lysis, which may be one of the major toxicity actions of GO against phytopathogens. The antibacterial mode proposed in this study suggests that the GO may possess antibacterial activity against more multi-resistant bacterial and fungal phytopathogens, and provides useful information about the application of GO in resisting crop diseases.

Electrochemical reduction of CO₍₂₎to value-added chemicals and fuels is a promising strategy to sustain pressing renewable energy demands and to address climate change issues. Direct observation of reaction intermediates during the CO₍₂₎reduction reaction will contribute to mechanistic understandings and thus promote the design of catalysts with the desired activity, selectivity, and stability. Herein, we combined in situ electrochemical shell-isolated nanoparticle-enhanced Raman spectroscopy and ab initio molecular dynamics calculations to investigate the CORR process on Cu single-crystal surfaces in various electrolytes. Competing redox pathways and coexistent intermediates of CO adsorption (*CO_atopand *CO_bridge), dimerization (protonated dimer *HOCCOH and its dehydrated *CCO), oxidation (*CO₂⁻and *CO₃²⁻), and hydrogenation (*CHO), as well as Cu-O_ad/Cu-OH_adspecies at Cu-electrolyte interfaces, were simultaneously identified using in situ spectroscopy and further confirmed with isotope-labeling experiments. With AIMD simulations, we report accurate vibrational frequency assignments of these intermediates based on the calculated vibrational density of states and reveal the corresponding species in the electrochemical CO redox landscape on Cu surfaces. Our findings provide direct insights into key intermediates during the CO₍₂₎RR and offer a full-spectroscopic tool (40–4,000 cm⁻¹) for future mechanistic studies.