-
Article
Open AccessTowards atom-level understanding of metal oxide catalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction with machine learning
Green hydrogen production is crucial for a sustainable future, but current catalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) suffer from slow kinetics, despite many efforts to produce optimal designs, particul...
-
Article
Best practices for oxygen electrocatalysis
Oxygen electrocatalysis is key for energy conversion and storage technologies such as fuel cells and water electrolysers. However, the measurement of the performance of electrocatalysts is not standardized. Th...
-
Article
Open AccessA cross-scale framework for evaluating flexibility values of battery and fuel cell electric vehicles
Flexibility has become increasingly important considering the intermittency of variable renewable energy in low-carbon energy systems. Electrified transportation exhibits great potential to provide flexibility...
-
Article
Sequencing polymers to enable solid-state lithium batteries
Rational designs of solid polymer electrolytes with high ion conduction are critical in enabling the creation of advanced lithium batteries. However, known polymer electrolytes have much lower ionic conductivi...
-
Article
Human- and machine-centred designs of molecules and materials for sustainability and decarbonization
Breakthroughs in molecular and materials discovery require meaningful outliers to be identified in existing trends. As knowledge accumulates, the inherent bias of human intuition makes it harder to elucidate i...
-
Article
Open AccessAccelerating amorphous polymer electrolyte screening by learning to reduce errors in molecular dynamics simulated properties
Polymer electrolytes are promising candidates for the next generation lithium-ion battery technology. Large scale screening of polymer electrolytes is hindered by the significant cost of molecular dynamics (MD...
-
Article
Tunable metal hydroxide–organic frameworks for catalysing oxygen evolution
The oxygen evolution reaction is central to making chemicals and energy carriers using electrons. Combining the great tunability of enzymatic systems with known oxide-based catalysts can create breakthrough op...
-
Article
Open AccessSwitchable wetting of oxygen-evolving oxide catalysts
The surface wettability of catalysts is typically controlled via surface treatments that promote catalytic performance. Here we report on potential-regulated hydrophobicity/hydrophilicity at cobalt-based oxide...
-
Article
The passivity of lithium electrodes in liquid electrolytes for secondary batteries
Rechargeable Li metal batteries are currently limited by safety concerns, continuous electrolyte decomposition and rapid consumption of Li. These issues are mainly related to reactions occurring at the Li meta...
-
Article
Moving beyond 99.9% Coulombic efficiency for lithium anodes in liquid electrolytes
As Li-ion battery costs decrease, energy density and thus driving range remains a roadblock for mass-market vehicle electrification. While Li-metal anodes help achieve Department of Energy targets of 500 Wh kg−1 ...
-
Article
Enhancing oxygen reduction electrocatalysis by tuning interfacial hydrogen bonds
Proton activity at the electrified interface is central to the kinetics of proton-coupled electron transfer (PCET) reactions for making chemicals and fuels. Here we employ a library of protic ionic liquids in ...
-
Article
Methods for nitrogen activation by reduction and oxidation
The industrial Haber–Bosch process to produce ammonia (NH3) from dinitrogen (N2) is crucial for modern society. However, N2 activation is inherently challenging and the Haber–Bosch process has significant drawbac...
-
Article
Regulating oxygen activity of perovskites to promote NOx oxidation and reduction kinetics
Understanding the adsorption and oxidation of NO on metal oxides is of immense interest to environmental and atmospheric (bio)chemistry. Here, we show that the surface oxygen activity, defined as the oxygen 2p-ba...
-
Article
Finding the right balance
Despite intensive research in the development of lithium-metal batteries, combining high energy density and long cycle life is still a great challenge. Now, a deeper understanding of the degradation mechanisms...
-
Article
Ultra-high-voltage Ni-rich layered cathodes in practical Li metal batteries enabled by a sulfonamide-based electrolyte
By increasing the charging voltage, a cell specific energy of >400 W h kg−1 is achievable with LiNi0.8Mn0.1Co0.1O2 in Li metal batteries. However, stable cycling of high-nickel cathodes at ultra-high voltages is ...
-
Article
Operando identification of site-dependent water oxidation activity on ruthenium dioxide single-crystal surfaces
Understanding the nature of active sites is central to controlling (electro)catalytic activity. Here we employed surface X-ray scattering coupled with density functional theory and surface-enhanced infrared ab...
-
Article
Engineering stable electrocatalysts by synergistic stabilization between carbide cores and Pt shells
Core–shell particles with earth-abundant cores represent an effective design strategy for improving the performance of noble metal catalysts, while simultaneously reducing the content of expensive noble metals1–4
-
Article
Open AccessGraph dynamical networks for unsupervised learning of atomic scale dynamics in materials
Understanding the dynamical processes that govern the performance of functional materials is essential for the design of next generation materials to tackle global energy and environmental challenges. Many of ...
-
Article
Charting a course for chemistry
To mark the occasion of Nature Chemistry turning 10 years old, we asked scientists working in different areas of chemistry to tell us what they thought the most exciting, interesting or challenging aspects relate...
-
Article
Speciation and Electronic Structure of La1−xSrxCoO3−δ During Oxygen Electrolysis
Cobalt-containing perovskite oxides are promising electrocatalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in alkaline electrolyzers. However, a lack of fundamental understanding of oxide surfaces impedes rati...
