Recent advances in photothermal effects for hydrogen evolution

Photothermal effect has been widely employed in the H2 evolution process at the advantage of using clean energy sources to produce another one of higher benefits. The solar-to-heat conversion have various forms and heat can facilitate reactions in a variety of dimensions. Hence, summarizing the sources and destinations of heat is important for constructing hydrogen production systems of higher efficiency. This view mainly focuses on the recent state-of-art progress of hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) based on photothermal effect. First, we introduce the main pathways of photothermal conversions applied in H2 evolution. Then, the functions of the photothermal effect are clearly summarized. Furthermore, we go beyond the catalytic reaction and introduce a method to improve the catalytic system by changing the catalytic bulk phase through thermal means. In the end, we sort out the challenges and outlook to offer some noble insights for this promising area.