Energy crisis coupling environmental pollution caused by biomass is becoming global issues. Electrocatalytical water splitting to produce H2 and upgrading 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) as 2,5-furandicarboxylic acid (FDCA) is a "one stone two birds" way to solve these problems in the meantime. Herein, the 0.5Ni2O3H/0.5Sb2O3 heterojunction was synthesized as a bifunctional electrocatalyst for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and electrocatalytic HMF oxidative reaction (HMFOR), to utilize the design concept that the Ni2O3H is in charge of HMFOR, and the Sb2O3 is in charge of HER. The 0.5Ni2O3H/0.5Sb2O3 shows the outstanding performances with the HMFOR potential of 1.39 V and the HER potential of 129 mV at 10 mA cm-2 in 1 M KOH + 0.1 M HMF. Meanwhile, the HMF is oxidized as FDCA through the 5-hydroxymethyl-2-furancarboxylic acid pathway according to the in situ electrochemical Attenuated Total Reflectance-Infrared Spectroscopy results, and the selectivity is up to 99.6% and the Faradaic efficiency is 95.5% at 1.3 V. This work provides a facile strategy to design a universal Sb-based heterojunction for electrocatalytic HER and HMF oxidation to generate FDCA.
Yang et al. (2026) studied this question.