Surface-Enriched Room-Temperature Liquid Bismuth for Catalytic CO Reduction.

Bismuth-based electrocatalysts are effective for carbon dioxide (CO) reduction to formate. However, at room temperature, these materials are only available in solid state, which inevitably suffers from surface deactivation, declining current densities, and Faradaic efficiencies. Here, the formation of a liquid bismuth catalyst on the liquid gallium surface at ambient conditions is shown as its exceptional performance in the electrochemical reduction of CO (i.

The Dual Functions of Defect-Rich Carbon Nanotubes as Both Conductive Matrix and Efficient Mediator for LiS Batteries.

LiS batteries are considered a promising energy storage system owing to the great abundance of sulfur and its high specific capacity. Polysulfide shuttling and sluggish reaction kinetics in sulfur cathodes significantly degrade the cycle life of LiS batteries. A modified method is employed to create defects in carbon nanotubes (CNTs), anchoring polysulfides, and accelerating electrochemical reactions.

Understanding the Effects of the Low-Concentration Electrolyte on the Performance of High-Energy-Density Li-S Batteries.

High-energy-density Li-S batteries have been impeded by low power rate and low sulfur utilization of high-sulfur-loading cathode and unstable Li metal anode. Herein, a new method protocol was proposed to separately investigate the effects of low-concentration electrolytes on the cathode and the anode for Li-S batteries. It was found that 0.

Lithium Metal Electrode with Increased Air Stability and Robust Solid Electrolyte Interphase Realized by Silane Coupling Agent Modification.

The quality of the solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) layer is the decisive factor for the electrochemical performance of Li-metal-based batteries. Due to the absence of effective bonding, a natural SEI layer may exfoliate from the Li anode during interfacial fluctuations. Here, a silane coupling agent is introduced to serve as an adhesion promoter to bridge these two dissimilar materials via both chemical bonding and physical intertwining effects.

Dehydration-Triggered Ionic Channel Engineering in Potassium Niobate for Li/K-Ion Storage.

Boosting charge transfer in materials is critical for applications involving charge carriers. Engineering ionic channels in electrode materials can create a skeleton to manipulate their ion and electron behaviors with favorable parameters to promote their capacity and stability. Here, tailoring of the atomic structure in layered potassium niobate (K Nb O ) nanosheets and facilitating their application in lithium and potassium storage by dehydration-triggered lattice rearrangement is reported.

Li S-Based Li-Ion Sulfur Batteries: Progress and Prospects.

The great demand for high-energy-density batteries has driven intensive research on the Li-S battery due to its high theoretical energy density. Consequently, considerable progress in Li-S batteries is achieved, although the lithium anode material is still challenging in terms of lithium dendrites and its unstable interface with electrolyte, impeding the practical application of the Li-S battery. Li S-based Li-ion sulfur batteries (LISBs), which employ lithium-metal-free anodes, are a convenient and effective way to avoid the use of lithium metal for the realization of practical Li-S batteries.

Hierarchically scaffolded CoP/CoP nanoparticles: controllable synthesis and their application as a well-matched bifunctional electrocatalyst for overall water splitting.

Transition metal phosphide (TMP) nanostructures have stimulated increasing interest for use in water splitting owing to their abundant natural sources and high activity for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Typically, the preparation of hierarchical TMPs involves the utilization of expensive or dangerous phosphorus sources, and, in particular, the understanding of topotactic transformations of the precursors to crystalline phases-which could be utilized to enhance electrocatalytic performance-remains very limited. We, herein, report a controllable preparation of CoP/CoP nanoparticles well dispersed in flower-like AlO scaffolds (f-CoP/CoP/AlO) as a bifunctional electrocatalyst for the HER and OER via the phosphorization of a flower-like CoAl layered double hydroxide precursor.

Photodeposited Pd Nanoparticles with Disordered Structure for Phenylacetylene Semihydrogenation.

Developing effective heterogeneous metal catalysts with high selectivity and satisfactory activity for chemoselective hydrogenation of alkyne to alkene is of great importance in the chemical industry. Herein, we report our efforts to fabricate TiO-supported Pd catalysts by a photodeposition method at room temperature for phenylacetylene semihydrogenation to styrene. The resulting Pd/TiO catalyst, possessing smaller Pd ensembles with ambiguous lattice fringes and more low coordination Pd sites, exhibits higher styrene selectivity compared to two contrastive Pd/TiO samples with larger ensembles and well-organized crystal structure fabricated by deposition-precipitation or photodeposition with subsequent thermal treatment at 300 °C.