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.

Silicone (Si) is one type of anode materials with intriguingly high theoretical capacity. However, the severe volume change associated with the repeated lithiation and delithiation processes hampers the mechanical/electrical integrity of Si anodes and hence reduces the battery's cycle‐life. To address this issue, sequence‐defined peptoids are designed and fabricated with two tailored functional groups, “OH” and “COOH”, as cross‐linkable polymeric binders for Si anodes of LIBs. Experimental results show that both the capacity and stability of such peptoids‐bound Si anodes can be significantly improved due to the decreased cracks of Si nanoparticles. Particularly, the 15‐mer peptoid binder in Si anode can result in a much higher reversible capacity (ca. 3110 mAh g⁻¹) after 500 cycles at 1.0 A g⁻¹ compared to other reported binders in literature. According to the density functional theory (DFT) calculations, it is the functional groups presented on the side chains of peptoids that facilitate the formation of Si−O binding efficiency and robustness, and then maintain the integrity of the Si anode. The sequence‐designed polymers can act as a new platform for understanding the interactions between binders and Si anode materials, and promote the realization of high‐performance batteries.