Intermediate-temperature water splitting based on protonic ceramic electrolysis cells is a promising strategy that is far less explored than its low- and high-temperature counterparts. This Perspective explores its challenges and offers guidelines on the design of anode materials and catalysts.

Isotope labelling with ¹³C-carbon has become a popular technique used to understand carbon dioxide electroreduction mechanisms. However, isotopes of carbon exhibit complex selectivity effects, which need to be carefully considered in the experimental design to avoid misinterpretations.

The structure and properties of the electric double layer that forms at the electrode–electrolyte interface is crucial in determining the performance of electrocatalytic reactions. This Perspective puts forward and discusses three major schools of thought on electrolyte effects and electrocatalyst design.

This Review covers the recent advances in the field of hydrogen atom transfer catalysis mediated by photoexcited transition metals without the use of external photosensitizers.

Nickel-catalysed cross-coupling reactions generally use Ni(II) or Ni(0) precatalysts. Here the authors report thermally stable dinuclear Ni(I) complexes with commercial isocyanide ligands for the efficient catalysis in Kumada, Suzuki–Miyaura and Buchwald–Hartwig cross-coupling reactions.

Earth-abundant cobalt-based catalysts have shown promise to replace iridium as anode catalysts in proton-exchange-membrane water electrolysers, but unfortunately they exhibit high degradation rates. Now, a lanthanum and calcium co-modification of Co₃O₄ is presented, in which lanthanum tunes the water–surface interactions to suppress cobalt dissolution and improve stability, while calcium leaching creates coordinatively unsaturated cobalt sites, leading to enhanced activity.

Electrocatalysis is a powerful tool in organic synthesis, but asymmetric strategies are still less developed. Now a cobalt/pyridoxal electrocatalytic system facilitates electrochemical single-electron transfer and asymmetric induction for the enantioselective generation of α-quaternary amino esters.

Titanosilicates in combination with H₂O₂ catalyse the ammoxidation of cyclohexanone to cyclohexanone oxime, a key Nylon precursor. Integrating a step for the in situ synthesis of H₂O₂ can lead to important efficiency gains but remains challenging. Here the authors report low-loaded subnanometric Pd clusters on titanium mordenite as an efficient catalyst for this transformation.

Monitoring charge carrier dynamics and photocatalytic reaction rates in individual photocatalyst particles is a challenging task that can help us to understand structure–reactivity relationships. Here single-molecule fluorescence imaging is coupled with femtosecond interferometric scattering microscopy to investigate these properties in 2D InSe flakes.

The stability of PEM water electrolysers is severely affected by the purity of the water employed. Here a cobalt-doped RuO₂ catalyst is developed to operate with water treated with reverse osmosis, which contains a significant amount of residual ions, achieving a degradation rate of only 10 μV h⁻¹ after 2,000 h of continuous operation at 1 A cm⁻².

Electrocatalysts enable the efficient interconversion of electrical and chemical energy for the sustainable production of fuels and chemicals. Here we highlight the importance of developing electrochemical adsorption isotherms to demystify complex reaction mechanisms and rationalize catalytic activity.