This Review addresses the technical challenges, scientific basis, recent progress, and outlook with respect to the stability and degradation of catalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) operating at electrolyzer anodes in acidic environments with an emphasis on ion exchange membrane applications. First, the term “catalyst stability” is clarified, as well as current performance targets, major catalyst degradation mechanisms, and their mitigation strategies. Suitable in situ experimental methods are then evaluated to give insight into catalyst degradation and possible pathways to tune OER catalyst stability. Finally, the importance of identifying universal figures of merit for stability is highlighted, leading to a comprehensive accelerated lifetime test that could yield comparable performance data across different laboratories and catalyst types. The aim of this Review is to help disseminate and stress the important relationships between structure, composition, and stability of OER catalysts under different operating conditions.

This review focuses on polyhedron-engineered Pt-based nanocrystals as highly active ORR catalysts for PEMFCs.

Since ever-increasing energy demands stimulated intensive research activities on lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), biomass as an earth-abundant renewable energy source has played an intriguing and promising role in developing sustainable biomass-derived carbons and their composite materials for high-performance LIB anodes. Different from other materials (e.g., silicon, tin, metal oxides, etc.), biomass-derived carbons and their composite materials have been applied more and more to LIBs due to their advantages such as low cost, green and eco-friendly synthesis, easy accessibility, sustainable strategy, and improved battery performance, including capacity, cycling property, and stability/durability. This tutorial review focusing on biomass-derived carbons and their composites in the application of LIB anodes will act as a strategic guide to build a close connection between renewable materials and electrochemical energy storage devices. Also, this review provides a critical analysis and comparison of biomass-derived carbons and their composites for LIB anodes, coupled with an important insight into the remaining challenges and future directions in the field.

A simple but very efficient reproducible approach was developed to fabricate novel mesoporous carbon nanofibers (MCNFs) with tailored nanostructure by using porous anodic aluminium oxide (AAO) membrane and colloidal silica as hard templates and phenolic resin as a carbon source. The as-prepared MCNFs with a channel diameter of ca. 200 nm reveal uniform one-dimensional (1D) nanofiber structure, created by the replication of the AAO template, and open interconnected spherical mesopores of ca. 30 nm in diameter embedded in the CNFs, mainly controlled by the particle size of the silica template. Due to their large mesopore size and volume, high specific surface area and unique nanostructure constituted by the 1D macro-scaled porous CNF and 3D interconnected mesopore structure, the MCNFs not only possess a large electrochemically active surface area, but also an open highway network favoring rapid electron transfer and fast mass transport. As a counter electrode in a CdSe quantum-dot-sensitized solar cell, the MCNF has demonstrated higher catalytic activity towards the reduction of polysulfide electrolyte and superior photovoltaic performance to its peers such as activated carbon (AC), hollow core/mesoporous shell carbon and ordered multimodal porous carbon, and the commonly used Pt electrode, revealing a fill factor of 0.60 and a power conversion efficiency of up to 4.81%. Excellent photovoltaic performance demonstrated by the MCNF suggests synergetic effects from the combination of 1D and 3D nanostructures.