Themed collection Journal of Materials Chemistry A Recent Review Articles

This Highlight explores advancements in Ni-rich cathode materials for sodium-ion batteries, which offer practical synthesis methods, high specific capacity, and environmental benefits while addressing energy density and cycle life challenges.

As an emerging crystalline porous material constructed from organic building blocks linked by covalent bonds, covalent organic frameworks (COFs) have garnered significant interest due to their well-defined pore structures.

This perspective delves into the nanoscale photodynamics mapping of perovskite (PSCs) and organic solar cells (OSCs) using a multimodal approach to enhance photovoltaic performance.

This perspective delves into electrochemically active and regenerable liquid organic hydrogen carriers (LOHCs), exploring their electrochemical properties and applications in hydrogen storage, regenerative fuel cells, batteries, and flow batteries.

This perspective summarizes recent advances in electrochemical humidity sensors and mainly focuses on three aspects: working principles; humidity sensing and power generation performances; self-powered humidity detection system.

Employing electrochemical impedance spectroscopy as a non-destructive analytical tool for elucidating the interfacial charge transfer in electrochemical energy conversion/storage systems.

This perspective article discusses the research, issues, and prospects of flexible batteries and supercapacitors in terms of one- and two-dimensions, as well as their stretchable, bendable, and twistable properties.

Green hydrogen, produced by water splitting with renewables, faces water scarcity issues. Atmospheric moisture, a stable source, offers an alternative. This article reviews technologies and challenges of using atmospheric water for H₂ production.

The potential of materials informatics in designing lithium extraction materials for capacitive deionization have been discussed.

We present a comprehensive perspective on the fundamental components of a solid-state battery, starting from all-solid-state electrolytes and extending to quantum power harvesting and storage.

Conventional lead halide perovskites, APbI₃, are excellent materials for photovoltaics and other optoelectronic applications. This perspective highlights the temperature and pressure induced structural phase transitions of CsPbI₃, MAPbI₃ and FAPbI₃.

This review focuses on nanostructure engineering of halide perovskites from three perspectives: size morphology, composition and interfacial engineering, and then reviews its applications in five fields and also summarises stability strategies.

Metal nanoparticles supported on various metal oxides play vital roles in numerous industrial catalytic reactions.

This review summarized recent advances in cost-effective polymer donors with a simple structure for organic solar cells.

The competition between electron transfer and ion transfer at the solid–liquid interface is summarized and the performance improvement strategies of contact-electro-catalysis under natural or industrial conditions are given.

This review analyzes advancements in CO₂-resistant perovskite cathodes for solid oxide fuel cells, detailing CO₂-poisoning mechanisms, evaluation methods, enhancement strategies, and characterization techniques for future cathode development.

This review, for the first time, provides concise insights into the synthetic methods, material characterization, and recent strategies for boosting the OER activity of various sol–gel-derived composites paving the way for subsequent research.

Single-molecule fluorescence imaging offers high spatiotemporal resolution and enables quantitative, operando studies of photocatalytic nanomaterials at the single- or sub-particle level.

This review summarizes the latest advances in material development and process design for electrochemically upgrading CO₂ to value-added C₃₊ chemicals.

The effects of pyrolysis protocols on the pore structure and gas separation performance of PI- and PIM-derived CMS membranes were systematically summarized and discussed, and the research progress in CO₂ and olefin/paraffin separation was reviewed.

Tailoring defect-based single-metal atom catalysts onto different supports for the CO₂ reduction, NO₃⁻ reduction, oxygen reduction and hydrogen evolution reactions.

The escalating demand for energy storage and catalysis devices in the realm of renewable energy applications has witnessed a rapid surge in recent years, with expectations for continued growth in the foreseeable future.

Dual-atom catalysts (DACs) have emerged as highly promising and efficient catalysts for water electrolysis, primarily due to their distinct dual-atom site effects.

The present review gives an overview of the different state-of-the-art X-ray techniques employed for the characterisation of photoelectrocatalytic systems, focusing on the possibilities of the studied techniques, cell designs and relevant results.

Single-atom catalysts (SACs) derived from metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) are revolutionizing electrocatalytic energy conversion.

State-of-the-art HEAs with outstanding water splitting performance is rationally designed, which provides a blueprint for the design of a next-generation platform for hydrogen regeneration.

This review covers advancements in noble and non-noble metal oxides for acidic OER, emphasizing the evaluation of catalyst instability, and strategies to enhance IrO₂, RuO₂, and TM oxides.

Recent strategies for improving the uniformity of metallic nanowire-based flexible transparent electrodes for application in highly reliable flexible devices are reviewed.

In this review, we summarized the application methods of SECM in electrochemical reactions and also discussed the challenges and prospects of SECM in characterizing the activity of electrocatalysts.

The review summarizes and categorizes innovative gel synthesis methods and coating fabrication techniques with robust interfacial adhesion, focusing on the strategies of user and eco-friendliness in versatile scenarios.

The synthesis, modulation and effect of MSI on 2D carbon-based heterogeneous catalysts for the HER.

Carbon-support-free platinum and non-platinum catalysts are reviewed to clarify the source of recent controversial results and to propose experimental conditions for their use in future fuel cell vehicles.

This review delves into the applications of DACs for the eCO₂RR, highlighting their pivotal role in producing a range of diverse Cn products. DACs, through their synergistic interactions.

This review focuses mainly on the overall facilitating effect of heterostructures on the OER process. The fabrication of heterostructured electrocatalysts and the relationship between their structures and electrocatalytic properties are discussed.

The utilization of transition metal tellurides in supercapacitors holds great promise for advancing energy storage technology, offering high performance, stability, tunability, and sustainability.

SiO₂ aerogel, characterized by its lightweight, highly porous, and thermally insulating properties, has emerged as a versatile material capable of addressing the challenges of providing sustainable energy and clean water.

Exploring doping fundamentals to boost inorganic SSEs, we detail their application in various electrolytes, highlighting neutron diffraction's role in revealing microstructural and lithium-ion distribution effects.

This review presents the recent advances in quaternary copper-based sulfides and their derivatives for solar hydrogen evolution, with an emphasis on the structure–function correlation.

Electrospun carbon nanofibers provide electrode materials with customizable structures for supercapacitors.

This review focuses on the design strategies of fullerenes and their derivatives as electron transport materials in inverted PSCs, and the effects of different application forms on the photovoltaic performance and stability of the devices.

Hydrogen production by electrochemical hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) using eco-friendly seawater electrolysis can help address the energy shortage.

Phase change materials (PCMs) possess high latent heat during the solid–liquid phase transition, making them promising materials for thermal energy storage.

This review highlights the materials selection and self-charging performance of polymer based piezoelectric components in all-in-one self-charging power systems.

This review examines recent research advances for photocatalytic reduction of CO₂ to C₂₊ products and predicts possible future directions to further improve the selectivity of multi-carbon species.

Reactive sulfur, oxygen and nitrogen species (reactive SON species) are important topics in redox biology and their recognition by rhodamine-derived probes is impactful in the bio-medical research field.

This review summarizes the gas sensing mechanisms, structural design and application progress of flexible chemiresistive gas sensors.

This review focuses on recent advancements in semitransparent perovskite solar cells, including perovskite compositions, interface engineering and cutting-edge transparent electrodes.

This review summarizes the progressive understanding of the mechanism of the Pd-catalyzed CO₂ reduction reaction, together with recent advances in the rational design of Pd-based electrocatalysts.

This review article contains a comprehensive and critical discussion of non-lithium 3D printed batteries from macro to micro scale.

The recent advances in portable and smart devices require modern microelectronics to be miniaturized, leading to the need for small, lightweight, reliable, and on-chip integrated energy storage systems like rechargeable micro-batteries (μBs).

OER plays a crucial role in energy storage and conversion, and the application of thermal fields in the OER is widespread but not systematically discussed. In this work, we have a discussion on built-in electric field and extra electric field.

This article discusses the fundamentals and progress of photothermal actuators, and their applications from bionic design to intelligent robots in detail.

This review comprehensively summarizes the development history of CPDT-based organic photovoltaic materials, which contributes to a deeper understanding of the revival of CPDT driven by low-cost acceptors.

In this review, we discuss the promising applications and practical considerations of thermoelectrics to harvest the unutilized thermal gradient between the plasma-facing surfaces and the molten salt coolant loop in tokamak fusion reactors.

Supercapacitors are emerging as viable replacements for AECs in next-generation filtering capacitors. Researchers focus on the development of high-performance filtering capacitors by selecting electrode materials and adopting structural designs.

This review summarizes the development (integrated effects, classifications, and applications) of emerging catalysts that integrate single atoms with nanoparticles (SA/NPCs). It also highlights the future challenges and opportunities in this field.

Oxygen evolution reaction (OER) electrocatalysis is the key to solve the problem of hydrogen production by hydrolyzing water and secondary metal–air batteries.

Supercapacitors are widely recognized as a favorable option for energy storage due to their higher power density compared to batteries, despite their lower energy density.

Challenges and progress made in alkali metal hybrid ion capacitors are discussed, including electrode materials, mechanisms, device/electrode components, electrochemical properties, and structural regulation in aqueous and nonaqueous systems.

This article reviews the different applications of ZnO-based heterojunction photocatalysts and discusses the strategies for improving their photocatalytic performance.

This review explores the potential for ceramic membrane composites used in highly efficient oil–water separation while summarizing the characteristics of 10 common ceramic composite membranes.

A critical review of the regulatory mechanisms, structural design, cooling performance, and applications of hybrid cooling to advance its commercial use in passive cooling.

Evaluating the advantages and limitations of applying machine learning for prediction and optimization in porous media, with applications in energy, environment, and subsurface studies.