Yunpeng Zuo

The electrochemical synthesis of urea from carbon dioxide (CO ₂ ) and nitrate (NO ₃ ⁻ ) is a sustainable route yet remains challenging, primarily due to slow carbon-nitrogen (C─N) coupling and competing ammonia (NH ₃ ) formation. Here, we demonstrate highly selective synthesis by modulating nitric oxide (NO) intermediate behavior on molybdenum-manganese (Mo─Mn) diatomic sites. The high NO surface coverage and strong binding energy promote a NO dimerization pathway to form N─N, which subsequently allows for efficient carbon monoxide (CO) insertion to form urea. This mechanism achieves 93.3% N selectivity toward urea, with a high yield rate of 35.16 millimoles per hour per gram and a faradaic efficiency of 48.1% at −0.6 volts versus reversible hydrogen electrode, while effectively suppressing NH ₃ by-product formation. Conversely, dual sites like copper-manganese (Cu─Mn) exhibit weak NO adsorption and low coverage, which suppress dimerization and favor the conventional pathway via NHCO intermediates, leading to predominant NH ₃ formation (86.2% N selectivity). This work establishes a NO-mediated strategy for efficient urea synthesis with minimized competing reactions.

Environmentally friendly energy sources (e.g., hydrogen) require an urgent development targeting to address the problem of energy scarcity. Electrocatalytic water splitting is being explored as a convenient catalytic reaction in this context, and promising amorphous nanomaterials (ANMs) are receiving increasing attention due to their excellent catalytic properties.Oxygen group‐based amorphous nanomaterials (O‐ANMs) are an important component of the broad family of ANMs due to their unique amorphous structure, large number of defects, and abundant randomly oriented bonds, O‐ANMs induce the generation of a larger number of active sites, which favors a better catalytic activity. Meanwhile, amorphous materials can disrupt the inherent features of conventional crystalline materials regarding electron transfer paths, resulting in higher flexibility. O‐ANMs mainly include VIA elements such as oxygen, sulfur, selenium, tellurium, and other transition metals, most of which are reported to be free of noble metals and have comparable performance to commercial catalysts Pt/C or IrO₂ and RuO₂ in electrocatalysis. This review covers the features and reaction mechanism of O‐ANMs, the synthesis strategies to prepare O‐ANMs, as well as the application of O‐ANMs in electrocatalytic water splitting. Last, the challenges and prospective remarks for future development in O‐ANMs for electrocatalytic water splitting are concluded.

Co-based catalysts are promising alternatives to precious metals for the selective and effective oxidation of 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) to the higher value-added 2,5-furandicarboxylic acid (FDCA). However, these catalysts still suffer from unsatisfactory activity and poor selectivity. A series of N-doped carbon-supported Co-based dual-metal nanoparticles (NPs) have been designed, among which the Co-Cu_1.4-CN_x exhibits enhanced HMF oxidative activity, achieving FDCA formation rates 4 times higher than that of pristine Co-CN_x, with 100% FDCA selectivity. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations evidenced that the increased electron density on Co sites induced by Cu can mediate the positive electronegativity offset to downshift the d-band center of Co-Cu_1.4-CN_x, thus reducing the energy barriers for the conversion of HMF to FDCA. Such findings will support the development of superior non-precious metal catalysts for HMF oxidation.

Porous β-Ni(OH)_x–SO₄ interlaminar material has been prepared with an expanded interplane spacing and in-plane porous channels, which exhibits advanced supercapacitor property with a high specific capacity of 212.5 mA h g⁻¹ at 3 A g⁻¹.

In this review, two-dimensional (2D) materials beyond graphene and their applications in electrocatalysis and energy storage have been summarized. Specifically, the electronic structure, chemical properties and synergistic phenomena are analyzed.

The mismatch between the surface free energy and the Gibbs free energy driving the structure reconstruction from the PtPdCu heterostructure to nanoframes during the heterogeneous catalysis.