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Coordination engineering of Ni single-atom catalysts on hierarchical porous carbon for desulfurization and hydrogen evolution electrocatalysis
Nano Research 2025, 18(12): 94907925
Published: 20 November 2025
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Rational design of electrochemical sulfide oxidation reaction (SOR) catalysts is a prerequisite to fully recycling hydrogen (H2) and elemental sulfur (S0) resources, realizing the bridge between environment and energy fields, as well as enlightening the optimization of metal‒sulfur battery applications. While transition metal catalysts often suffer from sulfur poisoning, single-atom catalysts (SACs) offer a promising solution, where the precise coordination environment of metal centers becomes a critical determinant of catalytic performance. Herein, for the first time, we develop a Ni single-atom catalyst for SOR with unique Ni-N3O1 coordination anchored on hierarchically porous carbon (Ni1@HPC), which demonstrates remarkable advantages over conventional Ni-N4 or Ni-O4 configurations, exhibiting a superior SOR activity (0.37 V vs. RHE at 100 mA·cm−2) that surpasses reported carbon-based catalysts and is comparable to most metal-based catalysts. In situ Raman and density functional theory (DFT) results reveal that the HPC facilitates rapid product S0 desorption while the Ni-N3O1 coordination enables appropriate reactant sulfide (S2−) adsorption, striking a critical balance between activity and stability that other coordination geometries fail to achieve. Additionally, the practical application of coupling hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and SOR is realized on Ni1@HPC with low power consumption, which is a promising alternative to the traditional overall water splitting (OWS) process. This work not only establishes a structure–activity relationship for single-atom catalysts in SOR but also provides a general strategy for optimizing metal coordination in electrocatalytic systems.

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