This review highlights recent encouraging research accomplishments achieved in the materials field for CO2reductionviaphotocatalysis, electrocatalysis and photoelectrocatalysis.

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A review of versatile polymer-based composites containing different functional organic and/or inorganic counterparts for the removal of hazardous metal ions from wastewater solutions.

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Ultrathin two-dimensional metal–organic frameworks (2D MOFs) have recently attracted extensive interest in various catalytic fields (e.g., electrocatalysis, photocatalysis, thermocatalysis) due to their ultrathin thickness, large surface area, abundant accessible unsaturated...

The development of high-performance electrocatalysts is a highly efficient strategy to optimize the sluggish kinetic property of the oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Herein, we synthesize a kind of nickel foam (NF)-supported electrocatalyst composed of a one-dimensional Co3O4 nanowire as the core and a two-dimensional NiFe-LDH nanosheet as the shell (denoted as NiFe-60/Co3O4@NF). Fluorine is introduced into the precursor Co­(OH)­F of Co3O4, which results in improved thermal stability and significantly increased regularly distributed oxygen vacancies, while the electrochemically deposited NiFe-LDH nanosheets possess a crystalline/amorphous hybrid structure. As a result, the hetero-interface mainly constituting Ni species from NiFe-LDH and Co3O4 from Co­(OH)F contributes to the interaction between Co and Fe species and facilitates the electron transfer. Simultaneously, the interaction between oxygen vacancies in Co3O4 and coordinatively unsaturated Fe species in the amorphous area in NiFe-LDH is also determined, finally completing the electron backtracking. Benefiting from these factors, only low overpotentials of 221 and 257 mV are required to deliver the current densities of 100 and 500 mA cm–2, respectively, with a quite small Tafel slope of 34.6 mV dec–1 during OER for the well-designed NiFe-60/Co3O4@NF electrocatalyst.

Value-added chemicals, fuels, and pharmaceuticals synthesized by organic transformation from raw materials via catalytic techniques have attracted enormous attention in the past few decades. Heterogeneous catalysts with high stability, long cycling life, good environmental-friendliness, and economic efficiency are greatly desired to accomplish the catalytic organic transformations. With the advantages of reversible Ce3+/Ce4+ redox pairs, tailorable oxygen vacancies, and surface acid–base properties, ceria-based catalysts have been actively investigated in the fields of catalytic organic synthesis. In this Review, we summarize the fundamentals and latest applications of ceria-based heterogeneous catalysts for organic transformations via thermocatalytic and photocatalytic routes. The fabricating approaches of various ceria and ceria-based catalysts and their structure/composition–activity relationship are discussed and prospected. The advanced characterization techniques and theoretical methods for reaction mechanism studies over CeO2-based catalysts are summarized and discussed. This comprehensive Review provides a basic understanding of the structure–performance relationships of ceria-based catalysts for organic synthesis. In addition, it also provides some insights and outlooks in the design and research direction in the ceria-based catalysts with better performance.

Photocatalytic conversion of cellulose to sugars and carbon dioxide with simultaneous production of hydrogen assisted by cellulose decomposition under UV or solar light irradiation was achieved upon immobilization of cellulose onto a TiO2 photocatalyst. This approach enables production of hydrogen from water without using valuable sacrificial agents, and provides the possibility for recovering sugars as liquid fuels.