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Dual-substrate synergistic catalysis for highly efficient water purification

Nature Water volume 3, pages 345–353 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Non-radical oxidation of pollutants by direct electron transfer has gained heightened interest in water purification for its higher selectivity and efficiency and lower tendency for byproduct formation than traditional advanced oxidation processes. Engineering of catalysts for efficient activation of two substrates (that is, pollutant and oxidant) is essential to trigger the direct electron transfer reactions but is often hindered by the distinct properties of the co-present substrates. We investigated the individual interaction between the catalyst and each substrate and proposed a dual-substrate synergistic catalysis strategy to achieve separate optimization of each substrate activation process. Experimental and theoretical analyses reveal a strong synergistic effect between the two catalysts that preferentially activate the substrates and have smaller resistance for interfacial electron transfer, thus drastically improving the decontamination efficiency. The dual-substrate synergistic catalysis system offers a conceptual advancement in achieving green and efficient water purification by substrate-specific activation, facilitating flexible design and mechanistic exploration of complex heterogeneous catalytic processes.

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Fig. 1: Construction, performance and reaction products of the DSSC system.
Fig. 2: Origin and mechanism of the synergistic catalysis.
Fig. 3: DFT calculations of the adsorption and activation of substrates in the DSSC system.
Fig. 4: Schematic illustration of the DSSC system.
Fig. 5: Evaluation of the DSSC system for practical applications.

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Data availability

The data for this study are available within the article and its Supplementary Information. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51821006 (H.-Q.Y.)), 52293443 (G.-X.H.), 52192684 (H.-Q.Y.), 52027815 (H.-Q.Y.) and 22376191 (G.-X.H.)). The DFT calculations in this work were conducted on the supercomputing system in the Supercomputing Center of the University of Science and Technology of China.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Advanced Environmental Technology, Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China

    Lu-Jia Shi, Gui-Xiang Huang, Zhao-Hua Wang, Ying-Jie Zhang, Jie-Jie Chen, Wen-Wei Li & Han-Qing Yu

  2. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA

    Yanghua Duan & Menachem Elimelech

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

    Menachem Elimelech

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  1. Lu-Jia Shi
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Contributions

G.-X.H. and H.-Q.Y. came up with the original idea; L.-J.S. and G.-X.H. designed and conducted the experiments; L.-J.S. performed the DFT calculations; J.-J.C. provided guidance on the DFT calculations; Z.-H.W., Y.-J.Z., W.-W.L., H.-Q.Y., Y.D. and M.E. helped the data interpretations; L.-J.S., G.-X.H., Y.D. and M.E. wrote the paper; all authors commented on the paper.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Gui-Xiang Huang, Han-Qing Yu or Menachem Elimelech.

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Nature Water thanks Shun Mao, Liang Wu and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Shi, LJ., Huang, GX., Wang, ZH. et al. Dual-substrate synergistic catalysis for highly efficient water purification. Nat Water 3, 345–353 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44221-025-00400-3

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