Themed collection Journal of Materials Chemistry A HOT Papers

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.

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.

This review summarizes the recent progress in the regulation of local reaction intermediates and protons near active sites and discusses how their microenvironment affects the C–C coupling efficiency in the electrocatalytic CO₂RR.

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 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.

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.

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.

We summarize the influence of polymer coatings on cathode particles for electrochemical energy storage applications. We report on the effect of different polymer types, their properties, and their influence on thermo-electro-chemical behavior.

Dual-metal site catalysts embedded in a carbon matrix (referred to as DMSCs) are gaining significant interest in sustainable energy research.

The current review discusses on vanadium- and manganese-based metal–organic frameworks and their derivatives for energy storage and conversion applications along with the potential future advancements in these fields.

A comprehensive review of direct captured CO₂ electro-conversion technology, a promising Carbon Capture and Utilization (CCU) technology that can achieve both techno-economic and environmental viability.

Nano-sized high entropy alloy (HEA) catalysts have attracted much attention as extraordinary electrocatalysts in water-splitting applications, i.e., the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER).

This review addresses four key factors and underlying mechanisms of doping engineering from crystal-field, molecular orbital, and ligand-field theory.

Metal/covalent organic frameworks (MOFs/COFs), with orderly aligned pores and adjustable pore characteristics, offer advantages over traditional fillers in constructing thin film nanocomposite (TFN) membranes for task-specific separations.

The review illustrates that the magnetic field effect can promote the generation of different nanostructures in material synthesis, achieve the transition from 1D to 2D and 3D structures in material assembly and improve the energy density of supercapacitor by the direct and indirect roles.

The efficient removal of trace impurities is significant for the production of high-purity olefins. This review summarizes the latest advancements in the deep purification of ethylene and propylene using MOF materials.

Prelithiation of LiMn₂O₄ balances the low first cycle efficiency of silicon anodes for improvements in energy density and prospective cell chemistry enabled by naturally abundant elements.

Tailoring the bismuth defects in ultrathin Bi₂WO₆ nanosheets can efficiently activate the C–H bond in toluene to produce benzaldehyde under light irradiation.

A novel heat storage ionomer binder with highly efficient heat-storage ability is proposed to function as an internal temperature conditioner, which allows the battery to function steadily over a wider temperature range.

An efficient adsorptive molecular sieving strategy to separate aromatic and cyclic aliphatic hydrocarbons via an intrinsic/extrinsic approach.

Three-dimensional porous NiCoP foam supported on Ni foam is a superb bifunctional electrocatalyst for overall seawater splitting, attaining a large current density of 1000 mA cm⁻² at a low cell voltage of 1.97 V with robust stability over 300 hours.

Nanocrystalline *MRE zeolite domains registered in quasicrystal-like, decagonal order is generated, which has strong acidity, reduced unidimensional channel length and mesopores, exhibiting enhanced n-dodecane hydroisomerization properties.

A facile “two-in-one” strategy was proposed to achieve a V₂O₅-TEMPO cathode for large capacity and long-life zinc–organic batteries.

We report a successful preparation of a TiO₂ photoanode with dominant (211) facets on various substrates. This photoanode can be used in rooftop PEC systems due to its low cost, high stability, good durability and acceptable efficiency.

High-efficiency MPSCs with a PCE of 18.06% were prepared by introducing PACl to manipulate perovskite crystallization in a triple-mesoporous structure.

The surface morphology and microenvironment of GDEs could be altered through the addition of ionomers to electrodes. It was crucial to consider the potential interactions between the ionomer and the catalyst for better performance.

This work demonstrates a series of functionalization methods to enhance the utility of thermoplastic-elastomer derived ordered mesoporous carbons, including chemical activation, heteroatom doping, and the introduction of nanoparticles.

Imidazolium cations facilitate electrochemical CO₂ reduction by (1) stabilizing CO₂˙⁻ with delocalized positive charge (π⁺) and (2) tuning the transport of proton donors to the electrochemical interface.

Currently, commonly used terahertz (THz) absorbers based on metamaterials exhibit limitations in their narrow-band characteristics.

Poly(biphenyl indole)-based membranes are designed for investigating the effect of side-chain engineering on the mechanism of manipulating proton transport.

The selective oxidation of organic small molecules not only promotes cathodic hydrogen production, but also acts as an alternative reaction to the anodic oxygen evolution reaction of electrolytic water, producing value-added products at the anode.

A novel Mn-based Sp-DRX electrode engineered to initiate favorable early phase transitions, effectively delaying detrimental transitions to extend battery life.

A multiphase artificial interphase layer can induce homogeneous deposition of Na⁺ and promote rapid transport of Na⁺. Therefore, the BiCl₃-Na anode achieves uniform dendrite-free deposition and improves electrochemical performance.

The ultrathin size of SNVO with oxygen vacancies and more active sites improved the diffusion ability of Zn²⁺ ions. SNVO exhibits excellent cycle stability, retaining 94.6% of its capacity after 1000 cycles at 10 A g⁻¹.

CoMn₂O₄/C is constructed for the electrochemical NO reduction reaction toward NH₃, with a maximum NH₃ faradaic efficiency of 89.3% at −0.7 V vs. RHE. CoMn₂O₄/C can promote the hydrogenation of *NO to *NHO (PDS, 0.13 eV) and inhibit the HER.

Preparation of dynamic reversible supramolecular oil gels filled with MXene@mGLM composites, which exhibit good lubrication properties and photothermal conversion properties.

The flexibility, integration and wearability of one-dimensional carbon-based cross-linked two-dimensional MXenes can exactly meet the rapid development of microelectronic technology, thereby achieving miniaturization and multi-functionality.

The previous understanding of prelithiation is still limited to the stage of compensating the lithium loss. Herein, the further essence of electrochemical prelithiation in regulating the SEI film and stabilizing the Li_x–Si phase is put forward.

In unbiased tandem cells, the production of C₂₊ products from CO₂ reduction on the cathode is dependent on the effective supply of charge from the photoanode.

The size effect of Ni–N–C catalysts from nanoparticles to clusters to single atoms on electrochemical CO₂ reduction is investigated. The Ni single atoms are active for CO formation, while Ni NPs and Ni clusters enable syngas production.

This work presents a comparative study of six types of oxide and halide solid-state electrolytes. It has been demonstrated that the electrochemical stability not only depends on metal species, but alsk the Li content and other factors.

This work reports the thermal and electron beam stabilities of a series of isostructural metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) of type MFM-300(M) (M = Al, Ga, In, Cr).

A high recoverable energy density (W_rec) of 7.0 J cm⁻³ and a large efficiency (η) of 81.5% were achieved in a Bi_0.5Na_0.5TiO₃-based lead-free relaxor by modulating polymorphic polar nanoregions.

Over 29%-efficient monolithic perovskite/Si tandem solar cells based on a poly-Si/SiO₂ passivating contact solar cell.

Plastic wastes produced graphitic carbon shell encapsulation on cobalt nanoparticles and the derived composite materials showed ferromagnetism and superior Li⁺ ion storage of 377 mA h g^–1 (Co-GNP-ZipC) and 509 mA h g^–1 (Co-GNP-FmC) at the 250^th cycle.

The strategy of this study achieves a large electrocaloric response of ΔT > 1 K within a temperature span of 66 °C. The cooling performance exceeds 90% and 80% of the maximum for temperature spans of 44 °C and 67 °C, respectively.

The one-dimensional nanowire Pt-based catalysts achieves a much lower local oxygen transport resistance than three-dimensional catalysts owing to the broader and shorter transport paths in well-layered ionomer films on one-dimensional catalysts.

An electrolyte design strategy is proposed for graphite anode in potassium-ion batteries working in a wide temperature range.

Lithium salts exert a great influence on the electrochemical performance of lithium metal batteries.

The molecular rotors in metal–organic frameworks enhance the low-pressure C₂H₂ adsorption, trigger a gate-opening for CO₂, and thus promote the C₂H₂/CO₂ separation.

A hybrid Z-scheme composite structure made of exfoliated g-C₃N₄ and Cs₃Bi₂Br₉ semiconductors and a reduced graphene oxide redox mediator is presented for enhanced photocatalytic CO₂ and H₂O conversion to CO, CH₄, and H₂.

Modulating the d-band electron of Ni nanoparticles brings forth efficient CO₂ electroreduction to CO with >90% selectivity.

A heterointerface engineering strategy of immobilizing core–shell CdSe/CdS quantum dots onto SiO₂ spheres was realized to efficiently integrate CO₂ photoreduction with the oxidation of furfuryl alcohol in one system.

The present work presents a multi-functional 0.2 M NaI electrolyte additive to suppress Zn dendrites and water-induced parasitic reactions in aqueous Zn metal batteries, featuring an astonishing Zn deposition/stripping cyclability of 8632 h.

A 2D MOF nanosheet was obtained via in situ exfoliation to boost the synergistic photoactivation of C(sp³)–H bonds and oxygen under mild conditions.

In this paper we present the in situ analysis of gas dependent alloying in bimetallic Au-Pd nanoparticles through a combination of CO-DRIFTS and in situ TEM providing direct insight in the surface- and nanoparticle bulk redistribution kinetics.

Novel SH-COF and exchangeable bonds enabled recyclable IPN membrane for effective molecular sieving and water remediation via pore size reduction and surface charge enhancement.