Lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries demonstrate great potential for next-generation electrochemical energy storage systems because of their high specific energy and low-cost materials. However, the shuttling behavior and slow kinetics of intermediate polysulfide (PS) conversion pose a major obstacle to the practical application of Li-S batteries. Herein, CrP within a porous nanopolyhedron architecture derived from a metal-organic framework (CrP@MOF) is developed as a highly efficient nanocatalyst and S host to address these issues. Theoretical and experimental analyses demonstrate that CrP@MOF has a remarkable binding strength to trap soluble PS species. In addition, CrP@MOF shows abundant active sites to catalyze the PS conversion, accelerate Li-ion diffusion, and induce the precipitation/decomposition of Li2S. As a result, the CrP@MOF-containing Li-S batteries demonstrate over 67% capacity retention over 1000 cycles at 1 C, ∼100% Coulombic efficiency, and high rate capability (674.6 mAh g-1 at 4 C). In brief, CrP nanocatalysts accelerate the PS conversion and improve the overall performance of Li-S batteries.

Gas-phase SiO2-supported amorphous Ni-Ru bimetallic phosphide composite catalysts (NiRuP/SiO2) are prepared in this study. Using diphenyl ether as a lignin-related model compound, the reactivity of NiRuP/SiO2 in the catalytic hydrogenolysis of a 4–O–5-type linkage is investigated under mild conditions. The molar ratios of nNi/nRu and nP/nM have a significant influence on the acidic properties of the bimetallic phosphides. The total acidity exhibits a strong linear correlation with the hydrogenolysis yield of diphenyl ether. Among all the catalysts, the Ni5RuP2/SiO2 catalyst shows high catalytic activities for the hydrogenolysis of diphenyl ether without excessive hydrogenation and is introduced to depolymerize lignin. Furthermore, 2D-HSQC-NMR spectroscopy analysis revealed that Ni5RuP2/SiO2 exhibited high activity for C–O cleavage. The predominant hydrogenolysis products from lignin are higher value-added chemicals. The findings of this work are beneficial to the biorefinery industry and provide an alternative method to make better use of lignin.