Carbon‐based heteroatom‐coordinated single‐atom catalysts (SACs) are promising candidates for energy‐related electrocatalysts because of their low‐cost, tunable catalytic activity/selectivity, and relatively homogeneous morphologies. Unique interactions between single metal sites and their surrounding coordination environments play a significant role in modulating the electronic structure of the metal centers, leading to unusual scaling relationships, new reaction mechanisms, and improved catalytic performance. This review summarizes recent advancements in engineering of the local coordination environment of SACs for improved electrocatalytic performance for several crucial energy‐convention electrochemical reactions: oxygen reduction reaction, hydrogen evolution reaction, oxygen evolution reaction, CO2 reduction reaction, and nitrogen reduction reaction. Various engineering strategies including heteroatom‐doping, changing the location of SACs on their support, introducing external ligands, and constructing dual metal sites are comprehensively discussed. The controllable synthetic methods and the activity enhancement mechanism of state‐of‐the‐art SACs are also highlighted. Recent achievements in the electronic modification of SACs will provide an understanding of the structure–activity relationship for the rational design of advanced electrocatalysts.

Ag nanoparticles (NPs) with different surface morphologies can be synthesized through white light irradiation of photochemically prepared Ag nanoseeds within 20 min. The fundamental photophysical and photochemical properties of benzil in deaerated solvents at room temperature are investigated through analyzing nanosecond absorption spectra. In ethanol, after the single photon excitation of benzil by 355 nm nanosecond laser pulses, one kind of reactive intermediate with a long-lived lifetime of 375.83 ± 93.70 μs is generated and capable of reducing the coexisted Ag + to generate Ag nanoseeds with their diameters in the range from 3 to 12 nm. Theoretical calculations indicate that the reactive intermediate is benzil-ethanol hydrogen-bonded complex biradical (ben-eth biradical). Furthermore, the excited-state hydrogen bonding dynamics and its influence on the photophysical and photochemical properties are discussed. White light irradiation under air can make these Ag nanoseeds grow in size with a speed of 10 nm/min and have unique morphologies. In particularly, the nanowhisker covered Ag NPs can be synthesized and possess a unique narrow optical absorption peak at 325 nm. This work not only provides insights into the mechanisms of photosensitized synthesis of Ag nanoseeds but also emphasizes the utilization of white light as a convenient and efficient tool to tailor morphologies of Ag NPs.

The electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is a green chemistry route for sustainable energy production. Compared to 2H-phase molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), the 1T-phase MoS2 (1T-MoS2) have higher theoretical activity and...

Covalent triazine frameworks (CTFs) are promising photocatalysts for hydrogen evolution. The current research focuses on optimizing the band structure and intrinsic charge separation efficiency of CTFs. Other influential factors, i.e., the water affinity and the interaction with the Pt cocatalyst, are rarely investigated. Herein, we provide a facile protonation strategy for significantly improving the photocatalytic performance of CTFs. The protonated CTFs (P-CTF) can exhibit a hydrogen evolution rate of 6595 μmol g −1 h −1 , which is 7.14 times that of pristine CTFs. The main contribution of protonation is to improve the interaction among the P-CTF, H 2 O molecules, and Pt co-catalyst, which can increase the H 2 O concentration around the active catalytic sites, thus facilitating the transfer of the photogenerated electron from the Pt co-catalyst to the H 2 O. Our results provide some insight into the role of protonation in promoting the photocatalytic hydrogen evolution performance.

A new airfoil shape parameterization method is developed, which extended the Bezier curve to the generalized form with adjustable shape parameters. The local control parameters at airfoil leading and trailing edge regions are enhanced, where have significant effect on the aerodynamic performance of wind turbine. The results show this improved parameterization method has advantages in the fitting characteristics of geometry shape and aerodynamic performance comparing with other three common airfoil parameterization methods. The new parameterization method is then applied to airfoil shape optimization for wind turbine using Genetic Algorithm (GA), and the wind turbine special airfoil, DU93-W-210, is optimized to achieve the favorable Cl/Cd at specified flow conditions. The aerodynamic characteristic of the optimum airfoil is obtained by solving the RANS equations in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method, and the optimization convergence curves show that the new parameterization method has good convergence rate in less number of generations comparing with other methods. It is concluded that the new method not only has well controllability and completeness in airfoil shape representation and provides more flexibility in expressing the airfoil geometry shape, but also is capable to find efficient and optimal wind turbine airfoil. Additionally, it is shown that a suitable parameterization method is helpful for improving the convergence rate of the optimization algorithm.