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COVID-19 has had a profound effect on the education of senior high school students and junior undergraduates. This disruption was severe to participation in scientific communication and activities that sought to foster human connections and the sharing of ideas. Conferences in particular had to adapt-- either transitioning to completely remote or remote with the possibility of an in-person component. In this work, we seek to capture the experience of senior high school summer interns as they attend their first national academic conference during the time of COVID-19. This work summarizes relevant discussions for first-time attendees such as how to decide upon which talks to attend and how to be an active listener to material outside of ones current knowledge base. Finally, this work discusses the benefits and challenges of the hybrid format and briefly offers suggestions for organizers and attendees moving forward

Summary Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is receiving growing interest for energy storage because it can be locally synthesized from renewable energy through the two-electron water oxidation and the two-electron oxygen reduction reactions. Recently, engineering the microenvironment of existing catalysts has become a promising approach to address the activity, selectivity, and stability challenges of H2O2 synthesis and fuel cells, reducing the gap between theoretical prediction and experimental observations. We summarize these progresses from a multi-scale perspective, including tailoring the active sites on the catalytic surface, engineering the interface near the reactive sites, and improving the device design to achieve selective H2O2 conversion. Such strategies tune the thermodynamic energy barriers and reaction pathways, facilitate mass transfer for reactants and products, and stabilize the products and catalytic surfaces. The discussions here are expected to stimulate further efforts to achieve efficient on-site H2O2 production and power generation by H2O2 with high round-trip efficiency.

One key objective in electrocatalysis is to design selective catalysts, particularly in cases where the desired products require thermodynamically unfavorable pathways. Electrochemical synthesis of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) via the two-electron water oxidation reaction (2e− WOR) requires a +0.54 V higher potential than four-electron O2 evolution. So far, best-performing electrocatalysts require considerable overpotentials before reaching peak faradaic efficiency. We present Mn-alloyed TiO2 coatings prepared by atomic layer deposition (ALD) and annealing as a stable and selective electrocatalyst for 2e− WOR. Faradaic efficiency of >90% at < 150 mV overpotentials was achieved for H2O2 production, accumulating 2.97 mM H2O2 after 8 hours. Nanoscale mixing of Mn2O3 and TiO2 resulted in a partially filled, highly conductive Mn3+ intermediate band (IB) within the TiO2 mid-gap to transport charge across the (Ti,Mn)Ox coating. This IB energetically matched that of H2O2-producing surface intermediates, turning a wide bandgap oxide into a selective electrocatalyst capable of operating in the dark. However, the high selectivity is limited to the low overpotential regime, which limits the system to low current densities and requires further research into increasing turn-over frequency per active site.