Bioinspired and Bioderived Aqueous Electrocatalysis

Abstract

The development of efficient and sustainable electrochemical systems able to provide clean-energy fuels and chemicals is one of the main current challenges of materials science and engineering. Over the last decades, significant advances have been made in the development of robust electrocatalysts for different reactions, with fundamental insights from both computational and experimental work. Some of the most promising systems in the literature are based on expensive and scarce platinum-group metals; however, natural enzymes show the highest per-site catalytic activities, while their active sites are based exclusively on earth-abundant metals. Additionally, natural biomass provides a valuable feedstock for producing advanced carbonaceous materials with porous hierarchical structures. Utilizing resources and design inspiration from nature can help create more sustainable and cost-effective strategies for manufacturing cost-effective, sustainable, and robust electrochemical materials and devices. This review spans from materials to device engineering; we initially discuss the design of carbon-based materials with bioinspired features (such as enzyme active sites), the utilization of biomass resources to construct tailored carbon materials, and their activity in aqueous electrocatalysis for water splitting, oxygen reduction, and CO2 reduction. We then delve in the applicability of bioinspired features in electrochemical devices, such as the engineering of bioinspired mass transport and electrode interfaces. Finally, we address remaining challenges, such as the stability of bioinspired active sites or the activity of metal-free carbon materials, and discuss new potential research directions that can open the gates to the implementation of bioinspired sustainable materials in electrochemical devices.