Progresses of in situ H2O2 generation and corresponding pollutant removal applications: a review.

Catalytic hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) generation from oxygen and water enables a sustainable environment to operate in an effective and green energy-to-chemical conversion way, which has attracted increasing interest in the fields of energy production and environment treatment. In light of this, tremendous progresses and developments have been made during the past decades in catalytic H2O2 production for pollutant removal from three perspectives including photocatalysis, electrocatalysis or chemical activation. Herein, we critically review the state-of-the-art developments over various procedures of H2O2 generation and its further application, with the existence of photocatalysts, electrocatalysts, and catalysts, respectively. Benefiting from extensively experimental and theoretical investigations, the performance and stability of H2O2 generation and its utilization can be maneuvered by devising catalytic platform based on numerous catalysts with predominant electronic, chemical and physical properties, which endow the catalysts with efficient electrons transportation, abundant active sites, and sufficient oxygen adsorption for H2O2 generation. Furthermore, this review also discusses the formation mechanism of H2O2 by 2e-ORR and 2e-WOR, as well as its functional process of activating and removing pollutants, and summarizes the design principles of various catalysts by focusing on the formation of H2O2. We finally highlight the specific challenges and prospects related to the utilization of catalysts and envision the possible future development trends in the fields of pollutant removal.