Hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) is a green oxidant that has been widely used. The direct synthesis of hydrogen peroxide (DSHP) offers significant advantages in terms of high atomic economy and environmentally friendly effects. However, due to the inevitable side reactions and severe mass transfer limitations, it is still challenging to balance the selectivity and activity for the DSHP. Combining theoretical understanding with the controllable synthesis of nanocatalysts may significantly facilitate the design of “dream catalysts” for the DSHP. In this work, the main factors affecting the reaction performance of catalysts and the active sites of catalysts have been reviewed and discussed in detail. The development and design of catalysts with high efficiency were introduced from three aspects: the catalyst support, active component and atomic impurity. In addition, the coupling of DSHP and other oxidation reactions to realize one-pot in situ oxidation reactions was comprehensively emphasized, which showed essential guiding significance for the future development of H₂O₂.

A simple yet general one-step solvothermal method is applied to synthesize sub-7 nm monodispersed single-crystal NiPt₂ nanoparticles (NPs) with the morphology of truncated octahedrons in the alloying state of disordered atomic arrangements. The effective magnetic moments of these NPs exhibit an anomalous temperature dependency, increasing from approximately 0.9 μ_B/atom at 15 K to 1.9 μ_B/atom at 300 K. This is an increase by a factor of more than three compared with bulk Ni. On the basis of experiments involving X-ray absorption near-edge spectroscopy of the L3 edge for Pt and density functional theory calculations, the observed novel magnetism enhancement and its anomalous temperature dependence are attributed to the electron transfer arising from the thermal-activation effects.