Solar fuels articles from across Nature Portfolio

Photocatalytic synthesis of H₂O₂ is an attractive route to this important chemical and potential energy carrier, but improvements in performance and operation without sacrificial agents are needed. Here the authors report a porphyrin-based photocatalyst with promising performance for H₂O₂ production from only H₂O and O₂.

The sustainable production of chemicals and fuels from waste carbon sources holds significant promise for reducing our dependence on fossil resources. Here, the authors demonstrate renewable formate production from biomass wastes and CO2 powered by solar energy.

The simplicity of particle suspension reactors and the precise synthetic control afforded by silicon nanowire growth are used to develop a system that can produce hydrogen fuel by splitting water with sunlight.

Direct seawater electrolysis is an approach to produce hydrogen from an abundant water source, but current catalysts face performance and durability challenges. Here Guo et al. introduce a hard Lewis acid layer on the catalyst surface that generates local alkalinity, facilitating water splitting and minimizing degradation.

The carbon and energy efficiencies of current CO₂/CO electrolysis systems are limited. Here the authors show that these metrics can be improved by controlling ion flows in the vicinity of a copper catalyst by the application of a covalent organic framework.

A versatile solar-driven hybrid photoelectrochemical platform has been developed for the simultaneous conversion of greenhouse gas CO₂ and waste plastics into value-added fuels and chemicals with high efficiency and selectivity.