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Recommended practice to report selectivity in electrochemical synthesis of H2O2

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Two different types of H2O2 selectivity are reported for the electrochemical synthesis of H2O2: molar fraction selectivity and Faradaic selectivity. Here we revisit their definitions and discuss the best way to report H2O2 selectivity, which can help to avoid misunderstandings or unfair performance comparisons in this growing field.

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Fig. 1: Trends of 2e–-ORR and 4e–-ORR publications in recent years.
Fig. 2: The relationship between the two types of selectivity.

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Acknowledgements

This work was not directly funded. H.W. is a CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar in the Bio-inspired Solar Energy Program. C.X. thanks the support from J. Evans Attwell-Welch Postdoctoral Fellowship. H.W. acknowledges support from the Welch Foundation Research Grant.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA

    Chuan Xia, Jung Yoon (Timothy) Kim & Haotian Wang

  2. Smalley-Curl Institute, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA

    Chuan Xia

  3. Azrieli Global Scholar, Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR), Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Haotian Wang

Authors
  1. Chuan Xia
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  2. Jung Yoon (Timothy) Kim
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  3. Haotian Wang
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Contributions

The project was conceptualized by C.X. and H.W., and supervised by H.W.; C.X. and H.W. wrote the manuscript with input from J.K.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Haotian Wang.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Xia, C., Kim, J.Y.(. & Wang, H. Recommended practice to report selectivity in electrochemical synthesis of H2O2. Nat Catal 3, 605–607 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41929-020-0486-1

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