Renewable energy articles within Nature Chemistry

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• Article | 27 January 2022

  A photosensitizer–polyoxometalate dyad that enables the decoupling of light and dark reactions for delayed on-demand solar hydrogen production

  Decoupling the processes of light harvesting and catalytic hydrogen evolution could be a potentially important step in storing solar energy. This has now been achieved with a single molecular unit: a light-harvesting ruthenium complex–polyoxometalate dyad that absorbs light, separates and stores charge and then generates hydrogen on demand following the addition of a proton donor.

  • Sebastian Amthor
  • , Sebastian Knoll
  •  & Carsten Streb

• Article | 23 September 2021

  Oxidative cleavage of C–C bonds in lignin

  The valorization of lignin is generally implemented through the cleavage of labile C–O bonds to produce aromatic monomers in up to 40 wt% yield. The remaining material consists of lignin dimers and oligomers connected by C–C bonds, but now a method has been developed for the oxidative cleavage of these C–C bonds using oxoammonium salts, to produce benzoquinones.

  • Elena Subbotina
  • , Thanya Rukkijakan
  •  & Joseph S. M. Samec

• News & Views | 19 February 2016

  Redox flow batteries go organic

  The use of renewable resources as providers to the electrical grid is hampered by the intermittent and irregular nature in which they generate energy. Electrical energy storage technology could provide a solution and now, by using an iterative design process, a promising anolyte for use in redox flow batteries has been developed.

  • Wei Wang
  •  & Vince Sprenkle

• Article | 09 March 2015

  Combined biomass valorization and hydrogen production in a photoelectrochemical cell

  Photoelectrochemical water-splitting produces hydrogen at the cathode and oxygen at the anode. The anode reaction is, however, kinetically unfavourable. Now, reduction of water at the cathode has been combined with oxidation of 5-hydroxymethylfurfural at the anode resulting in a photoelectrochemical cell that produces fuel and a useful platform chemical.

  • Hyun Gil Cha
  •  & Kyoung-Shin Choi

• News & Views | 22 April 2014

  Packing heat

  Nanoscopic templates functionalized with light-reactive chromophores could ultimately be used to store solar energy and later release it as heat. Now, it has been shown that packing the chromophores together increases both storage capacity and lifetime.

  • Nathan R. Neale