No abstract

The sluggish kinetics of the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) limits the commercialization of oxygen electrochemistry, which plays a key role in renewable energy technologies such as fuel cells and electrolyzers. Herein, a facile and practical strategy is developed to successfully incorporate Ir single atoms into the lattice of transition metal oxides (TMOs). The chemical environment of Ir and its neighboring lattice oxygen is modulated, and the lattice oxygen provides lone‐pair electrons and charge balance to stabilize Ir single atoms, resulting in the enhancement of both OER activity and durability. In particular, Ir0.08Co2.92O4 NWs exhibit an excellent mass activity of 1343.1 A g−1 and turnover frequency (TOF) of 0.04 s−1 at overpotentials of 300 mV. And this catalyst also displays significant stability in acid at 10 mA cm−2 over 100 h. Overall water splitting using Pt/C as the hydrogen evolution reaction catalyst and Ir0.08Co2.92O4 NWs as the OER catalyst takes only a cell voltage of 1.494 V to achieve 10 mA cm−2 with a perfect stability. This work demonstrates a simple approach to produce highly active and acid‐stable transition metal oxides electrocatalysts with trace Ir.

Solar-driven photodegradation has attracted great attention, given that it provides a promising solution for eliminating antibiotics in aqueous environments, due to its environmental friendliness and economic feasibility. However, solar conversion efficiencies are restricted by insufficient sunlight absorption and ineffective charge separation/transfer. Herein, the incorporation of sulfur into Ba 2 Bi 1.4 Nb 0.6 O 6 nanorods brings about O and S vacancies, leading to significantly enhanced light absorption and charge separation/transport efficiency by almost 4 times. As a result, the obtained material exhibits greatly improved photocatalytic degradation efficiency for tetracycline hydrochloride under visible light irradiation with outstanding stability. The photocatalytic degradation efficiency is highest among the state-of-the-art photocatalysts for tetracycline hydrochloride degradation. This work paves a promising pathway to develop highly efficient photocatalysts with a narrow band gap.