Chemists from Würzburg present a new enzyme-like molecular catalyst for water oxidation.
Mankind is facing a central challenge: it must manage the transition to a sustainable and carbon dioxide-n .
A paper accepted for publication describes the foundational knowledge and experimental advancement in hetero-interface engineering for fabricating materials for water splitting via photocatalysis and electrocatalysis.
Encapsulating metal-based catalysts inside carbon sheaths is a frequently-adopted strategy to enhance their durability under various harsh situations and improve their catalytic activity simultaneously. Such carbon encapsulation, however, imposes significant complications for directly modifying materials’ surface atomic/electronic configurations, fundamentally impeding the accurate tuning of their catalytic capabilities. Herein, a universal single-atom alloy (SAA) strategy is reported to indirectly yet precisely manipulate the surface electronic structure of carbon-encapsulated electrocatalysts. By versatilely constructing a SAA core inside an N-doped carbon sheath, material's electrocatalytic capability can be flexibly tuned. The one with Ru-SAA cores serves as an excellent bifunctional electrocatalyst for oxygen/hydrogen evolution, exhibiting minimal cell voltage of 1.55 V (10 mA cm−2) and outstanding mass activity of 1251 mA m (Formula presented.) for overall water splittin
In a first, a dye-sensitized photocatalyst that facilitates the most efficient solar water splitting activity recorded to date (for similar catalysts) has been optimized by researchers from Tokyo .
For both energy and environmental issues, researchers are interested in the photocatalytic water splitting process. Using light energy and a catalyst, water is divided into oxygen and hydrogen in this process.