The drive toward clean, renewable, and efficient energy technologies has generated tremendous research interest in developing clean key energy reactions that are driven by electrocatalytic processes, including oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), oxygen evolution reaction (OER), hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), nitrogen reduction reaction (NRR), and carbon dioxide reduction reaction (CRR). However, these reactions exhibit sluggish kinetics due to multistep electron transfer, and only occur at triple-phase boundary regions. Therefore, much effort has been devoted to the development of cost-effective and high-performance electrocatalysts to boost such electrocatalytic activities, as promising alternatives to noble metal benchmarks.
In addition to prolific achievements in materials science, advances in interface chemistry have also been critical in considering the complex phenomena taking place at triple-phase boundary regions, such as mass diffusion, electron transfer, and surface reaction. Therefore, insightful principles and effective strategies for comprehensive optimization--ranging from active sites to electrochemical interface--are necessary to fully enhance electrocatalytic performance with an aim toward practical device applications.
The aim of the current Research Topic is to cover promising, recent, and novel research trends in efficient electrochemical energy conversion reactions, with multiscale principles in terms of electronic structure, surface chemistry, hierarchical morphology, and electrode interface. Insights into the design and definition of various electrocatalysts for ORR, OER, HER, NRR, CRR are welcome, as well as their practical applications in metal-air batteries, water splitting devices, fuel cells, etc.
The drive toward clean, renewable, and efficient energy technologies has generated tremendous research interest in developing clean key energy reactions that are driven by electrocatalytic processes, including oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), oxygen evolution reaction (OER), hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), nitrogen reduction reaction (NRR), and carbon dioxide reduction reaction (CRR). However, these reactions exhibit sluggish kinetics due to multistep electron transfer, and only occur at triple-phase boundary regions. Therefore, much effort has been devoted to the development of cost-effective and high-performance electrocatalysts to boost such electrocatalytic activities, as promising alternatives to noble metal benchmarks.
In addition to prolific achievements in materials science, advances in interface chemistry have also been critical in considering the complex phenomena taking place at triple-phase boundary regions, such as mass diffusion, electron transfer, and surface reaction. Therefore, insightful principles and effective strategies for comprehensive optimization--ranging from active sites to electrochemical interface--are necessary to fully enhance electrocatalytic performance with an aim toward practical device applications.
The aim of the current Research Topic is to cover promising, recent, and novel research trends in efficient electrochemical energy conversion reactions, with multiscale principles in terms of electronic structure, surface chemistry, hierarchical morphology, and electrode interface. Insights into the design and definition of various electrocatalysts for ORR, OER, HER, NRR, CRR are welcome, as well as their practical applications in metal-air batteries, water splitting devices, fuel cells, etc.