Compared with currently prevailing Li-ion technologies, sodium-ion energy storage devices play a supremely important role in grid-scale storage due to the advantages of rich abundance and low cost of sodium resources. As one of the crucial components of the sodium-ion battery and sodium-ion capacitor, electrode materials based on biomass-derived carbons have attracted enormous attention in the past few years owing to their excellent performance, inherent structural advantages, cost-effectiveness, renewability, etc. Here, a systematic summary of recent progress on various biomass-derived carbons used for sodium-ion energy storage (e.g., sodium-ion storage principle, the classification of bio-microstructure) is presented. Current research on the design principles of the structure and composition of biomass-derived carbons for improving sodium-ion storage will be highlighted. The prospects and challenges related to this will also be discussed. This review attempts to present a comprehensive account of the recent progress and design principle of biomass-derived carbons as sodium-ion storage materials and provide guidance in future rational tailoring of biomass-derived carbons.

Ammonia is a promising hydrogen carrier for producing CO_x-free hydrogen. However, its decomposition suffers from high reaction temperatures. This study reveals that trace Ga doping markedly boosts the low-temperature activity of Ni/Al₂O₃ catalyst for ammonia decomposition. The Ga-doped Ni/Al₂O₃ catalyst achieves 92.0% ammonia conversion at 500 ^oC and weight hourly space velocity (WHSV) = 30,000 mL g_cat⁻¹ h⁻¹. Kinetic experiments demonstrate that the introduction of Ga species alleviates catalyst hydrogen poisoning. Further studies confirm that Ga preferentially segregates on the catalyst surface and disperses around Ni nanoparticles. Interfacial Ga species facilitate hydrogen spillover from Ni to the Al₂O₃ support, which promotes the enrichment of adsorbed N* species and reduces their recombination temperature on the Ni surface. This work develops an efficient and stable Ni-based catalyst for low-temperature ammonia decomposition and provides a strategy for optimizing catalytic performance via the regulation of interfacial hydrogen transfer.

Ordered mesoporous carbon materials (OMCMs) are widely used as high-performance electrode materials due to their uniform pore structure, excellent electrical conductivity, and good stability. In this paper, three OMCMs with controllable N content were prepared by a nanocasting method using Fe₃O₄ nanocrystals as the template and organic ligands as the carbon source. By adopting a ligand exchange strategy, oleic acid, oleic amine, and octyl amine were successfully capped onto the Fe₃O₄ nanocrystals, respectively, which allowed the rational control of the elemental composition of OMCMs at the molecular level. Further characterizations revealed that the nitrogen content of the resulting OMCMs increased as the proportion of nitrogen atoms in the ligand increased, while the order of the porous structure decreased as the hydrocarbon chain length decreased. This study demonstrates that both the N-doping content and the order of the OMCMs are influenced by the N-containing ligand. This finding will provide a fundamental aspect for their further applications as high-performance electrode and catalytic materials in the field of electrochemistry.

Colloidal nanocrystals (NCs) represent essential building blocks for emerging next-generation technologies. However, long-chain organic ligands introduced during synthesis are electrically insulating, which creates substantial bottlenecks for charge transport in NC-based...