Themed collection Most popular 2025 energy conversion articles

This review summarizes recent advancements in plasmonic photothermal nanomaterials – including metals, metal nitrides, metal chalcogenides, metal oxides, and MXenes – for solar steam generation.

The review systematically elucidates the mechanistic effects of various modulation strategies on the performance of non-fused-ring non-fullerene acceptors and provides insightful perspectives on future research directions.

Chemical looping technologies offer a promising pathway for clean energy production, addressing the urgent need for decarbonization in light of escalating global energy demands and climate change concerns.

The crystal structure, chemical bonding characteristics, band structure, and phonon dynamics of GeTe are revealed to elucidate the underlying mechanisms that contribute to its exceptional performance.

A series of asymmetrical spiro-type hole transporting materials (HTMs) was developed by precisely regulating the peripheral flexible diphenylamine and rigid carbazole fragments, which enabled a high efficiency of 25.21% in perovskite solar cells.

A Z-scheme photocatalyst sheet prepared by filtration offers new opportunities for efficient, scalable production of hydrogen using narrow-bandgap photocatalysts.

We report novel Ruddlesden–Popper (n = 1) oxysulfides, NaMTiO_2.2S_1.8 (M = Nd, Sm), the first oxysulfides exhibiting “interlayer-active” behavior, featuring ion exchange, interlayer hydration, and potential for overall photocatalytic water splitting.

Ni₂P–Ni₁₂P₅-supported Os (Os/Ni₂P–Ni₁₂P₅) as HER catalyst is synthesized within 30 s through an ultrafast and simple microwave quasi-solid approach.

The Fe-Ni_0.85Se nanosheet arrays were designed to catalyze hydrogen evolution and sulfion oxidation reactions, which achieve energy-efficient hydrogen generation and sulfion upgradation to sulfur product.

Photochemical H₂ evolution efficiency was increased by up to 500% when using Janus objects, designed by decorating in an asymmetric way organic bulk heterojunction particles with Pt nanoclusters, compared with their randomly covered counterparts.

Schematic of structural and electronic descriptors for HER catalytic activity, along with the correlation between ΔG_H and descriptor.

MoS₂ serves as low-cost and Pt-free co-catalyst that improves charge carrier dynamics in Mo/Sb₂Se₃/CdS/MoS₂ photocathode. Its optimized integration minimizes interfacial recombination, leading to record J_ph of 31.03 mA cm⁻² and HC-STH of 3.08%.

WO₃/BiVO₄ heterojunction layer space systematically explored using chemical vapour deposition synthesis to map and identify samples of highest performance for solar water splitting applications.

g-C₃N₄ modified with Pd single atoms – decorated by reactive deposition – exhibits remarkable photocatalytic hydrogen production efficiency with a low loading of 0.05 wt%, far outperforming g-C₃N₄ decorated with Pd nanoparticles.

Hollow and N-doped porous carbon structures enhanced hydrogen diffusion and the d–p hybridization effect with Ru clusters, thereby boosting the HER performance.

Two ortho-benzodipyrrole-based non-fullerene acceptors, CFB and CMB, have been developed to reduce charge recombination and energy loss in organic photovoltaics.