Scientists have developed an innovative "sulfur-for-oxygen exchange" method to synthesize a porous Fe₂(MoO₄)₃/CoMoO₄ heterojunction electrocatalyst. This material demonstrated exceptional oxygen evolution reaction (OER) performance, requiring only 244 mV of overpotential to achieve a current density of 10 mA·cm⁻² – significantly outperforming commercial benchmarks. Furthermore, it exhibited outstanding stability, operating continuously for over 100 hours. This breakthrough paved the way for scalable, cost-effective green hydrogen production.

A novel fiber optic sensing platform captures real-time bubble dynamics during hydrogen evolution, revealing how bubble growth and detachment impact catalyst performance. This breakthrough bridges interfacial gas behavior with electrochemical efficiency, offering new strategies for green hydrogen optimization.

A research team from Tsinghua University and Tongji University has proposed a “100-Kilometer Coastal Desalination for Short-cut Water Cycle (100K-CDS)” strategy to address China’s growing water scarcity. The authors reposition seawater desalination as a transformative solution, highlighting how the integration of reverse osmosis and renewable energy has cut costs and enabled a 57.5~98.3% reduction in carbon emissions. By industrializing water production along the coast—home to 40% of China's population and over half its GDP—this approach treats freshwater as a manufacturable resource, decoupling water security from natural constraints and offering a scalable model for arid regions worldwide.

The utilization of solar energy to address energy and environmental challenges has a seen a significant growth in recent years. Metal halides, which offer unique advantages such as tunable bandgaps, high light absorption efficiencies, favorable product release rates, and low exciton binding energies, have emerged as excellent photocatalysts for energy conversion. This paper reviews the recent advancements in both all-inorganic and organic-inorganic hybrid metal halide photocatalytic materials, including the fundamental mechanisms of photocatalytic CO₂ reduction, various synthesis strategies for metal halide photocatalysts, and their applications in the field of photocatalysis. Finally, it examines the current challenges associated with metal halide materials and explores potential solutions for metal halide materials, along with their future prospects in photocatalysis applications.

Photocatalytic seawater splitting is an attractive way for producing green hydrogen. Significant progresses have been made recently in catalytic efficiencies, but the activity of catalysts can only maintain stable for about 10 h. Here, we develop a vacancy-engineered Ag₃PO₄/CdS porous microreactor chip photocatalyst, operating in seawater with a performance stability exceeding 300 h. This is achieved by the establishment of both catalytic selectivity for impurity ions and tailored interactions between vacancies and sulfur species. Efficient transport of carriers with strong redox ability is ensured by forming a heterojunction within a space charge region, where the visualization of potential distribution confirms the key design concept of our chip. Moreover, the separation of oxidation and reduction reactions in space inhibits the reverse recombination, making the chip capable of working at atmospheric pressure. Consequently, in the presence of Pt co-catalysts, a high solar-to-hydrogen efficiency of 0.81% can be achieved in the whole durability test. When using a fully solar-driven 256 cm² hydrogen production prototype, a H₂ evolution rate of 68.01 mmol h⁻¹ m⁻² can be achieved under outdoor insolation. Our findings provide a novel approach to achieve high selectivity, and demonstrate an efficient and scalable prototype suitable for practical solar H₂ production.