Polymer electrolyte fuel cells (PEFCs) are a clean, sustainable device to convert chemical energy to electricity and can provide power for automobiles, trains, and ships. In PEFCs, the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) occurs at the cathode and is catalyzed at electrocatalysts. The activity of ORR electrocatalysts is known to limit the overall performance of PEFCs because the ORR is more sluggish than the hydrogen oxidation reaction at the anode. In the state-of-the-art PEFC, platinum group metal (PGM)-based ORR electrocatalysts are used. Since PGMs are rare and expensive, highly active and durable non-PGM ORR electrocatalysts are required for widespread applications of PEFCs. In nature, metalloenzymes such as cytochrome c oxidase and multicopper oxidases efficiently catalyze the ORR and utilize multinuclear iron and/or copper complexes as active sites. The structure of these active sites and enzyme reaction mechanisms would give us design concepts of artificial non-PGM electrocatalysts for the ORR, possibly leading us to develop next-generation non-PGM electrocatalysts. Herein, recent research progress on understanding enzymatic ORR reaction mechanisms and developing non-PGM ORR electrocatalysts is reviewed from the viewpoint of bio-inspired approaches.

Photoelectron spectroscopy is our main tool to explore the electronic structure of novel material systems, the properties of which are often determined by an intricate interplay of competing interactions. Elucidating the role of this interactions requires studies over an extensive range of energy, momentum, length, and time scales. We show that immersion lens-based momentum microscopy with spin-resolution is able to combine these seemingly divergent requirements in a unifying experimental approach. We will discuss applications to different areas in information research, for example, resistive switching and spintronics. The analysis of resistive switching phenomena in oxides requires high lateral resolution and chemical selectivity, as the processes involve local redox processes and oxygen vacancy migration. In spintronics topological phenomena are currently a hot topic, which lead to complex band structures and spin textures in reciprocal space. Spin-resolved momentum microscopy is uniquely suited to address these aspects.

In-situ analysis of heterogeneous catalysts under reaction condition is indispensable to understand reaction mechanisms and nature of active sites. Ambient-pressure X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (AP-XPS) is one of the powerful methods to investigate chemical states of catalysts and reaction intermediates adsorbed on the surface. In this review, reaction of carbon dioxide on Cu(997) and Zn-deposited Cu(997) surfaces are discussed as an example of surface chemistry of weakly adsorbed molecules, together with a brief overview of recent progress in AP-XPS methods.

Surface X-ray diffraction is a powerful tool for studying the atomic structure of buried interfaces nondestructively. The analysis is often limited to the static structures, since the acquisition of crystal truncation rod (CTR) profile dataset is lengthy. Recently, high-speed methods have been developed by several groups, aiming for the in operando study of interface phenomena. Our method uses energy-dispersive convergent X-rays and area detector, and allows the quantitative structure analysis during irreversible phenomena in a typical time frame of 1 s. In this review, the energy-dispersive method is compared with the other high-speed methods which use high-energy X-rays with a grazing incidence geometry and transmission geometry, and then two examples of the real-time monitoring are presented, the photo-induced wettability transition of the rutile-TiO₂(110) surface and an electrochemical reaction on the Pt(111) electrode surface, to show the capability of the energy-dispersive method.

Establishing an accurate view of the photocatalytic mechanism of titanium dioxide (TiO₂) has been a challenging task since the discovery of the Honda-Fujishima effect. Despite the great success of catalytic studies in elucidating the chemical and physical aspects of photocatalysis, many questions remain. A surface science approach, which is characterized by the use of atomically well-defined surfaces in precisely controlled environments, is a powerful tool to shed light on the fundamental mechanism, especially the dynamics of photoexcited carriers. In the present contribution, recent progress in photocatalytic research that correlates photocatalytic activity and carrier dynamics on rutile and anatase TiO₂ is reviewed. A special focus is placed on the lifetime of photoexcited carriers. We present a method to determine the carrier lifetime; pump-probe time-resolved soft X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, utilizing an ultraviolet laser as a pump light and a synchrotron radiation as a probe light. The carrier lifetime is found to be linearly correlated with the photocatalytic decomposition/desorption rate of acetic acid adsorbed on single-crystal TiO₂ surfaces. The important role of a potential barrier on the TiO₂ surface, which influences the carrier lifetime and the photocatalytic activity, is discussed.