科技科学

Activity of solar-driven polymer catalysts unleashed to produce a potential green fuel

Nature正文已收录本站
  • NEWS AND VIEWS

Engineering of polymer crystals has vastly increased the activity of these materials as catalysts for producing hydrogen fuel from water, using only sunlight.

By

  1. Filip Podjaski

    1. Filip Podjaski is in the Physical and Theoretical Chemistry Laboratory, Department of Chemistry, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3QZ, UK.

Since the 2015 Paris climate agreement, increasing efforts have been made to minimize greenhouse-gas emissions and to conduct research into ways to provide green energy reliably. Wind and solar energy could power the world electrically, but the intermittency of these sources remains a challenge, and existing energy infrastructure would need to be electrified to replace fossil fuels. Another solution is to use hydrogen as a fuel, producing it directly from water in a catalytic process driven by sunlight. Polymer catalysts hold great promise for this, but their efficiency at harnessing sunlight has lagged behind that of inorganic materials. Writing in Nature, Zhuzhang et al.1 report how high efficiency can be achieved and sustained using polymer catalysts.

Nature 656, 569-570 (2026)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-02373-z

References

  1. Zhuzhang, H. et al. Nature 656, 624–629 (2026).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Hisatomi, T., Yamada, T., Nishiyama, H., Takata, T. & Domen, K. Nature Rev. Mater. 10, 769–782 (2025).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Savateev, O., Antonietti, M. & Wang, X. (eds) Carbon Nitrides: Structure, Properties and Applications in Science and Technology (Walter DeGruyter, 2023).

    Google Scholar 

  4. Kosco, J. et al. Nature Energy 7, 340–351 (2022).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

  • Read the paper: Photocatalytic water splitting by 2D polymer with out-of-plane carrier flow

  • Light-activated catalysts point the way to sustainable chemistry

  • Charge transfer observed in light-activated catalyst particles

  • See all News & Views

Subjects

Latest on:

  • Materials science
  • Catalysis
  • Energy

  • Atomic-scale double-slit interferometry with a focused electron probe

    Article

  • Defect passivation and optical management of triple-junction solar cells

    Article

  • Lead carboxylates passivation for meter-scale perovskite solar modules

    Article

  • Entangled dual-site migration via boracycle rearrangement

    Article

  • Pyridoxal photoenzymes for asymmetric radical–radical cross-couplings

    Article

  • Selectivity emerges from indiscriminate photoreduction

    Article

  • How the Middle East can become a hub for sustainable aviation fuels

    Comment

  • Thermally evaporated perovskite/silicon tandems via formamidinium eutectic

    Article

  • Demand for lithium is surging: here’s how to make mining more sustainable

    News