Single-atom catalysts provide an effective approach to reduce the amount of precious metals meanwhile maintain their catalytic activity. However, the sluggish activity of the catalysts for alkaline water dissociation has hampered advances in highly efficient hydrogen production. Herein, we develop a single-atom platinum immobilized NiO/Ni heterostructure (Pt_SA-NiO/Ni) as an alkaline hydrogen evolution catalyst. It is found that Pt single atom coupled with NiO/Ni heterostructure enables the tunable binding abilities of hydroxyl ions (OH*) and hydrogen (H*), which efficiently tailors the water dissociation energy and promotes the H* conversion for accelerating alkaline hydrogen evolution reaction. A further enhancement is achieved by constructing Pt_SA-NiO/Ni nanosheets on Ag nanowires to form a hierarchical three-dimensional morphology. Consequently, the fabricated Pt_SA-NiO/Ni catalyst displays high alkaline hydrogen evolution performances with a quite high mass activity of 20.6 A mg⁻¹ for Pt at the overpotential of 100 mV, significantly outperforming the reported catalysts.

The requirement of energy-storage equipment needs to develop the lithium ion battery (LIB) with high electrochemical performance. The surface modification of commercial LiFePO₄ (LFP) by utilizing zeolitic imidazolate frameworks-8 (ZIF-8) offers new possibilities for commercial LFP with high electrochemical performances. In this work, the carbonized ZIF-8 (C_ZIF-8) was coated on the surface of LFP particles by the in situ growth and carbonization of ZIF-8. Transmission electron microscopy indicates that there is an approximate 10 nm coating layer with metal zinc and graphite-like carbon on the surface of LFP/C_ZIF-8 sample. The N₂ adsorption and desorption isotherm suggests that the coating layer has uniform and simple connecting mesopores. As cathode material, LFP/C_ZIF-8 cathode-active material delivers a discharge specific capacity of 159.3 mAh g⁻¹ at 0.1C and a discharge specific energy of 141.7 mWh g⁻¹ after 200 cycles at 5.0C (the retention rate is approximate 99%). These results are attributed to the synergy improvement of the conductivity, the lithium ion diffusion coefficient, and the degree of freedom for volume change of LFP/C_ZIF-8 cathode. This work will contribute to the improvement of the cathode materials of commercial LIB.

This review summarizes the recent advances of functional separators towards the suppression of lithium dendrites in lithium metal batteries.

A hybrid catalyst based on single-atom Pt anchored Co(OH)₂ nanosheets growing on a Ag nanowire network with high intrinsic activity is developed for an efficient hydrogen evolution reaction.