Energy & Environmental Science最新文献

Zinc–air self-charging batteries integrate energy harvesting, storage, and conversion by utilizing ambient oxygen to drive spontaneous redox reactions, but their practical application is limited by sluggish self-charging kinetics and unstable aqueous interfaces. Here we introduce a hybrid electrolyte of N,N-dimethylacetamide (DMAC) with 10 vol% H₂O that achieves rapid and durable Zn–air self-rechargeability. DMAC offers low vapor pressure, high oxygen solubility, and resistance to reactive oxygen species, while the controlled water content supplies protons essential for Zn²⁺ intercalation. This synergy drives the formation of a porous, oxygen-permeable interfacial layer that accelerates Zn²⁺ transport and continuous oxygen reduction. Consequently, the batteries self-charge to 0.9 V within 13 min in an oxygen atmosphere, deliver a record cumulative discharge capacity of 37 392 mAh g⁻¹ over 200 cycles, and maintain high-rate capability. This electrolyte design overcomes intrinsic limitations of aqueous systems and establishes a pathway toward safe, high-performance air self-charging batteries.

The global crises of resource scarcity, energy shortages, and environmental degradation demand innovative solutions for sustainable development. Solar-driven interfacial evaporation (SIE) has emerged as a transformative technology for recovering resource/energy from seawater or wastewater. Despite SIE's high evaporation efficiency at the gas–liquid interface, significant challenges persist, including volatile organic compound (VOC) enrichment, selective separation limitations, and energy trade-offs in multifunctional systems. Accordingly, this work provides a comprehensive overview of recent SIE systems for resource/energy recovery while establishing novel dynamics and thermodynamics frameworks to guide their design and application. By shifting the paradigm from “water purification” to a “resource/energy factory”, SIE systems can offer a promising pathway toward carbon neutrality.

Pseudocapacitive materials store electrochemical energy through fast and reversible surface charge transfer reactions. Titanium carbide MXenes are two-dimensional materials which have shown redox or intercalation pseudocapacitive properties depending on the electrolyte. Nevertheless, the intrinsic pseudocapacitive charging mechanism in individual MXene flakes remains unresolved. Here, we employ in situ scanning transmission X-ray microscopy (STXM) to map the local chemical changes in individual Ti₃C₂T_x MXene flakes during spontaneous and electrochemical intercalation of protons and lithium ions in aqueous electrolytes. Our investigations reveal that proton and lithium-ion intercalation induces a reduction and an oxidation, respectively, of the titanium atoms in the MXene. This difference reveals a profoundly different chemical origin between redox and intercalation pseudocapacitive processes. By elucidating the interplay between ion hydration, MXene surface chemistry and flake morphology, our study highlights the relevance of chemical imaging in single entities for the fundamental understanding of electrochemical charge storage mechanisms.

Dimerized M-series small-molecule acceptors feature highly planar conjugated backbones, enabling ordered stacking and enhanced morphological stability. However, rotatable bonds introduced during dimerization often induce conformational disorder, undermining efficient charge generation and transport. Here, we report two rationally designed M-series dimers, DM-TF and DMF-T, which both incorporate strategic intramolecular fluorine⋯hydrogen interactions to enhance conformational rigidity. DM-TF, which features fluorinated thiophene π-bridges interacting with hydrogen atoms on the central end groups, exhibits superior conformational rigidity, reduced energetic disorder, improved crystallinity, and enhanced charge transport properties compared to DMF-T. Consequently, DM-TF-based organic solar cells (OSCs) deliver a power conversion efficiency of 18.40%, surpassing the DMF-T-based devices (17.77%). Additionally, they demonstrate exceptional thermal stability, exhibiting negligible performance loss after being heated at 80 °C for 2000 hours. Furthermore, incorporating DM-TF as a third component into PM6:M36 blends boosts the efficiency of the resulting devices to 19.16%, which is the highest reported value among all non-Y-series acceptors. These results underscore the effectiveness of engineering intramolecular non-covalent interactions in the molecular design of acceptor materials and highlight the great potential of dimerized M-series acceptors for high-efficiency and stable OSCs.

Efficient metal-free catalysts are crucial for advancing aluminum–air batteries (AABs), yet their development has been hindered by poor electronic structure optimization and sluggish mass transport. In this study, we developed a hierarchically porous N/S co-doped carbon nanoreactor via an etching-doping pyrolysis strategy, achieving an ultrahigh surface area of 2630 m² g⁻¹ and a well-organized pore network. The resulting catalyst demonstrated outstanding oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) activity, with half-wave potentials of 0.952 V (vs. RHE; RHE stands for reversible hydrogen electrode) in alkaline and 0.754 V (vs. RHE) in acidic media. When assembled into AABs, it delivered a peak power density of 265 mW cm⁻² and an energy density of 4152 Wh kg⁻¹, along with excellent cycling stability. Finite element simulations showed that the hierarchical porosity promoted oxygen diffusion and enhanced reaction kinetics. Furthermore, in situ characterization and theoretical calculations revealed that S–C–N configurations dynamically transformed into O_pre–S–C–N groups under working conditions, which modulated the electronic structure of adjacent carbon sites, facilitated *O-to-*OH conversion, and reduced energy barriers. This study provided a dynamic site-regulation strategy for improving ORR kinetics in metal-free catalysts and offered a new pathway for designing high-performance energy materials operating under realistic conditions.

In aqueous zinc (Zn) metal secondary batteries, some interfacial side reactions, such as the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), anode corrosion and dendrite growth, often lead to short circuit and cycling performance deterioration. Here we select four kinds of amino acid monomers (i.e., lysine, glutamate, cysteine and phenylalanine) with different polarity side chain groups to tailor pentapeptides, successfully constructing a thermodynamically stable colloid dispersion electrolyte system with the Tyndall effect for Zn metal secondary batteries. The proposed electrolyte system composed of the tailored lysine pentapeptide (LP) effectively suppresses Zn dendrite growth through regulating the (002) crystalline plane orientation. Furthermore, the LP has strong attraction towards H₂O molecules, thereby achieving desolvation of Zn²⁺ ions and reducing anode corrosion as well as the HER. In this LP-based colloid dispersion electrolyte, the Zn//Zn symmetric cell demonstrated an unprecedented ultralong cycling time beyond 10 000 hours (416 days) at 2 mA cm⁻². The developed Zn-ion pouch cells with a high cathode mass loading of ∼ 28.7 mg cm⁻² displayed a capacity retention of ∼83.7% after 1000 cycles at 0.5 A g⁻¹, which is superior to most recently reported zinc-ion pouch cells. The proposed thermodynamically stable colloid dispersion electrolyte is a new aqueous electrolyte system for economical, safe and long-lifespan Zn metal secondary batteries.

The synergistic regulation of steam utilization and proton transport at the oxygen electrode is crucial for proton ceramic electrolysis cells (PCECs). Ruddlesden–Popper (RP) perovskites leverage interlayer water intercalation features to achieve rapid proton uptake even under low-steam conditions. Herein, an RP-type oxygen electrode capable of reversible phase transitions and hydrated oxyhydroxide formation under high-temperature steam was constructed, successfully transcending the hydration limits of single perovskites. By integrating the structural analysis employing microcrystal electron diffraction (MicroED) and density functional theory (DFT) calculations, it is revealed that the interlayer proton-trapping sites significantly boost the steam adsorption/hydration and lower the energy barrier for proton migration across layers. The Sr₃(Co_0.8Fe_0.1Nb_0.1)₂O_7−δ (SCFN-RP) electrode demonstrates excellent catalytic activity, reaching 1.01 A cm⁻²@1.3 V at 550 °C. This work emphasizes the crucial role of reversible hydrated oxyhydroxides in RP perovskites and offers a novel conception for the design of high-performance oxygen electrodes for PCECs.