Regulation of Catalyst Immediate Environment Enables Acidic Electrochemical Benzyl Alcohol Oxidation to Benzaldehyde.

Electrocatalytic alcohol oxidation in acid offers a promising alternative to the kinetically sluggish water oxidation reaction toward low-energy H generation. However, electrocatalysts driving active and selective acidic alcohol electrochemical transformation are still scarce. In this work, we demonstrate efficient alcohol-to-aldehyde conversion achieved by reticular chemistry-based modification of the catalyst's immediate environment.

Local CO reservoir layer promotes rapid and selective electrochemical CO reduction.

Electrochemical CO reduction reaction in aqueous electrolytes is a promising route to produce added-value chemicals and decrease carbon emissions. However, even in Gas-Diffusion Electrode devices, low aqueous CO solubility limits catalysis rate and selectivity. Here, we demonstrate that when assembled over a heterogeneous electrocatalyst, a film of nitrile-modified Metal-Organic Framework (MOF) acts as a remarkable CO-solvation layer that increases its local concentration by ~27-fold compared to bulk electrolyte, reaching 0.

Nickel-Iron-Modified 2D Metal-Organic Framework as a Tunable Precatalyst for Electrochemical Water Oxidation.

Mixed-metal metal-organic framework (MOF)-based water oxidation precatalysts have aroused a great deal of attention due to their remarkable catalytic performance. Yet, despite significant advancement in this field, there is still a need to design new MOF platforms that allow simple and systematic control over the final catalyst's metal composition. Here, we show that a Zr-BTB 2D-MOF could be used to construct a series of Ni-Fe-based oxide hydroxide water oxidation precatalysts with diverse Ni-Fe compositions.

Light-induced MOF synthesis enabling composite photothermal materials.

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are a class of porous materials known for their large surface areas. Thus, over the past few decades the development of MOFs and their applications has been a major topic of interest throughout the scientific community. However, many current conventional syntheses of MOFs are lengthy solvothermal processes carried out at elevated temperatures.