Recently, the team led by Academician Wang Shuangfei from the School of Light Industry and Food Engineering at Guangxi university (GXU) achieved a new advance in the study of wood-fiber carbon-based electrocatalysts. The related results were published in Advanced Materials under the title “Lattice Strain and Built-In Field Synergistically Boost Urea Oxidation via Dynamic NiOOH Mediation at Multiphase Heterointerfaces.” The first authors are Li Jiawei (PhD candidate, Class of 2026) and Li Lianxin (Master’s student, Class of 2023), and the corresponding author is Qian Guangfu, Assistant Professor at the School of Light Industry and Food Engineering; co-corresponding authors include Chen Changzhou, Associate Professor at the same school, Chen Jinli from Huazhong University of Science and Technology (postdoc), and Panagiotis Tsiakaras of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece.

Electrocatalytic urea oxidation-coupled hydrogen production is regarded as an ideal pathway to simultaneously treat urea-containing wastewater and produce green hydrogen. However, at industrial high current densities, non-noble-metal catalysts typically face sluggish urea oxidation kinetics, rapid poisoning of active sites, and limited gas-liquid mass transfer. In response to these challenges, the team successfully constructed a Ni/NiO/MoO2 micro-nano array multi-phase heterojunction electrocatalyst (Ni/NiO/MoO2@SC) where SC denotes a sulfur-doped lignin-derived carbon coating. The material forms multiphase interfaces among Ni, NiO, MoO2 and SC, introducing lattice strain effects and built-in electric fields simultaneously to optimize the catalyst’s electronic configuration, accelerate the dynamic generation and consumption of the active NiOOH species, and effectively suppress over-accumulation and poisoning of active sites. In situ characterization and theoretical calculations further confirm that this interface design can optimize the adsorption activation path of urea, promote N–N coupling and C–N bond cleavage, and weaken adsorption of the *COOH intermediate, thereby mitigating catalyst poisoning. Electrochemical tests show that at a current density of 10/500 mA cm^-2, the catalyst requires potentials of only 1.34/1.40 V; when integrated into a membrane electrode assembly, it can stably operate for 500 hours at an industrial current density of 500 mA cm^-2, demonstrating promising industrial application potential.

Guangxi’s rich forestry resources and vast reserves of agricultural and forestry biomass raise a critical regional question: how to realize high-value transformation of lignin and other byproducts. This study converts lignin into a sulfur-doped carbon coating layer, not only enabling waste biomass reuse but also significantly enhancing catalytic activity and stability through the carbon coating. This work opens new avenues for applying Guangxi’s agricultural and forestry biomass resources to wastewater treatment and hydrogen energy development.

The research received funding from projects including the Guangxi Natural Science Foundation General Program, Guangxi Natural Science Foundation Young Scientist Fund, Guangxi Talent Encouragement Program, and Guangxi Key Laboratory of Clean Pulping and Pulp and Paper Pollution Control Open Projects.