Guangxi University

High‐entropy amorphous catalysts (HEACs) integrate multielement synergy with structural disorder, making them promising candidates for water splitting. Their distinctive features—including flexible coordination environments, tunable electronic structures, abundant unsaturated active sites, and dynamic structural reassembly—collectively enhance electrochemical activity and durability under operating conditions. This review summarizes recent advances in HEACs for hydrogen evolution, oxygen evolution, and overall water splitting, highlighting their disorder-driven advantages over crystalline counterparts. Catalytic performance benchmarks are presented, and mechanistic insights are discussed, focusing on how multimetallic synergy, amorphization effect, and in‐situ reconstruction cooperatively regulate reaction pathways. These insights provide guidance for the rational design of next‐generation amorphous high‐entropy electrocatalysts with improved efficiency and durability.

Anion redox reactions in layered cathode materials have attracted significant attention due to their remarkable potential to enhance the capacity and energy density of lithium-ion batteries. However, in conventional sulfide-based cathodes such as Li_xTiS₂, anionic redox is only partially reversible at high voltages and suffers from rapid capacity fading. These challenges primarily originate from the intrinsic electronic band structure of Li_xTiS₂, where the Ti³⁺/Ti⁴⁺ redox couple lies far above the S 3p band, suppressing ligand-to-metal charge transfer during Li⁺(de)intercalation. To overcome this limitation, we introduce a bandgap-engineering strategy via partial substitution of Ti³⁺ with Cr³⁺, effectively narrowing the d-p bandgap and activating sustainable sulfur redox chemistry. The Cr-substituted compound, Li_0.80Cr_0.67Ti_0.33S₂, exhibits sustainable sulfur redox activity, thereby achieving a higher capacity of 223.0 mA h g^-1 and nearly doubling the energy density of pristine Li_0.80TiS₂. Furthermore, Li_0.80Cr_0.67Ti_0.33S₂ preserves its layered framework throughout the whole (de)lithiation process, indicating effective suppression of structural collapse during sulfur redox. Therefore, it demonstrates outstanding rate performance (77.5% capacity retention at 5.0C) and excellent long-term cycling stability (80% retention after 330 cycles), significantly outperforming its undoped counterpart. These findings highlight the critical role of ligand-metal d-p orbital overlap in enabling and stabilizing sustainable sulfur redox, providing valuable insights for the design of high-performance cathodes for next-generation lithium-ion batteries.

Cold stress is a major constraint on rice productivity, with the geng/japonica and xian/indica subspecies exhibiting markedly different cold tolerance. To uncover the epigenetic basis of this divergence, we conducted an integrated multi‑omics analysis of cold‑sensitive xian variety 9311 and cold‑tolerant geng variety Nipponbare. We identified fundamentally distinct epigenetic response strategies, Nipponbare actively remodels its epigenome through dynamic redistribution of H3K27me3 (21,043 differential peaks) and DNA methylation (12,031 differentially methylated regions) under cold stress, whereas 9311 undergoes passive epigenetic erosion that restricts its adaptive plasticity. This active remodeling in Nipponbare involves coordinated regulation of epigenetic writers and erasers, enabling precise control of chromatin states. Mechanistically, enhanced cold tolerance is achieved through dual epigenetic repression, H3K27me3 deposition and DNA hypermethylation, of negative regulators (e.g., OsGSK1 and 86 other cold‑stress‑related genes). Concurrently, positive regulators within the stress‑response network are activated via removal of these repressive marks or modulation of cis‑regulatory elements. The functional necessity of these epigenetic mechanisms was confirmed by pharmacological inhibition, which severely compromised the cold‑stress survival of Nipponbare. Evolutionary analysis suggests that geng rice has exploited epigenetic regulation to fine‑tune stress responses, while xian rice is subject to stronger epigenetic constraints. Collectively, our study establishes a genome-wide antagonistic interplay between H3K27me3 and DNA methylation and illustrates how their coordinated actions contribute to transcriptional diversity and adaptive evolution in rice.