Engineering Biomass-Derived Carbon Nanomaterial Interfaces for Green Hydrogen Technologies

Green hydrogen is essential for decarbonizing the energy sector, its widespread application is still constrained by the cost, durability, and efficiency of hydrogen production and storage technologies. Biomass-derived carbon nanomaterials have shown promise as interfacial materials because of their controllable surface chemistry, hierarchical porosity, defect-rich frameworks, and tunable electronic structure. Despite the rapid progress in catalyst development, the mechanistic role of biomass-derived carbon interfaces in governing electrochemical and adsorption processes remains insufficiently understood. This review presents an interface-centric framework that links hydrogen-energy performance to biomass precursor selection, synthesis techniques, structural evolution, and interfacial features. We systematically examine how controlled pyrolysis, hydrothermal processing, activation, defect engineering, and heteroatom doping regulate key interfacial descriptors, including adsorption energetics, charge-transfer resistance, electrochemically accessible active-site density, and transport dynamics. These descriptors are subsequently linked to the performance of biomass-derived carbon interfaces in the hydrogen evolution process, oxygen evolution reaction, hybrid catalyst architectures, photoelectrochemical systems, hydrogen storage, and practical electrolyzers. The focus is placed on dynamic interfacial phenomena, including electronic coupling, hierarchical transport, catalyst–support interactions, and interface reconstruction under operating conditions, which collectively govern activity, stability, and scalability. This review establishes a unified structure–interface–performance framework that provides quantitative design principles for next-generation biomass derived carbon materials for hydrogen production, storage, and utilization.