Single atom catalysts

Single atom catalysts hold the potential to significantly impact the chemical and energy industrial sectors. This editorial introduces the state of the field along with a collection of Articles and Comments that encapsulate the ongoing efforts of the research community in this field.

During the past decade, initial skepticism rapidly changed into widespread recognition of the role of single atoms in heterogeneous catalysts. The next decade could usher in the era of industrial applications as manufacturing of durable single atom catalysts is perfected.

Controlling the hybridization of single atoms in suitable host materials opens unique opportunities for catalyst design, but equally faces many challenges. Here, we highlight emerging directions from the last, highly productive, decade in single-atom catalysis and identify frontiers for future research.

Single-atom catalysts are a promising class of catalytic materials, but general synthetic methods are limited. Here, the authors develop a ligand-mediated strategy that allows the large-scale synthesis of diverse transition metal single atom catalysts supported on carbon.

Single atom catalysts provide the most efficient metal atoms usage and afford active site homogeneity, but surface attachment has proven challenging. Here, the authors use triple-bond-rich graphdiyne to anchor nickel/iron atoms and show high hydrogen evolution electrocatalysis activities.

Engineering the coordination environment of single atom catalysts offers to opportunity to optimize electrocatalytic activity. In this work, the authors prepare an unsymmetrical Cu-S₁N₃ single atom site on porous carbon with high performance in the oxygen reduction reaction.

Single-site catalysts supported by ultrathin two-dimensional (2D) porous matrix are desirable for catalytic reactions, yet their synthesis remains a great challenge. Herein the authors report a cocoon silk chemistry strategy to synthesize isolated metal single-site catalysts embedded in ultrathin 2D porous N-doped carbon nanosheets.

The general synthesis of single atom catalysts (SACs) is of broad interest to chemists but remains a formidable challenge. Here, with the precursor-dilution strategy, the authors successfully prepare 24 different SACs and the Pt SACs exhibit superior chemo- and regio-selectivity in hydrogenation.

Single-atom metal catalysts offer maximized material efficiency, but there is large room to improve the intrinsic activity per metal atom for many reactions. Here, the authors demonstrate that the solution for CO oxidation is to tackle the issue of lacking neighboring Pt atoms in the single-atom Pt1/CeO2 system.

Efficient electroreduction of CO₂ to multi-carbon products is challenging. Here, the single atom Cu encapsulated on N-doped porous carbon catalysts are designed for reducing CO₂ to acetone at low overpotentials and the active sites are identified as Cu coordination with four pyrrole-N atoms.

Single-atom alloys are promising catalysts for a number of different reactions. Here, the authors demonstrate that carbon monoxide can be used to transition a PdAu catalyst between a single atom and a cluster phase which exhibit distinct selectivities for ethanol dehydrogenation.

Understanding the structural dynamics of single-atom site in electrochemical reactions is crucial for design of an efficient catalyst. Here, the authors develop highly active Pt single-atom electrocatalyst, and reveal the dynamic evolution of active sites by using operando synchrotron spectroscopy.

Here the authors deploy Ni single atom-decorated carbon membranes as integrated gas diffusion electrodes to construct an extremely stable three-phase interface for CO₂ electroreduction, producing CO with a partial current density of 308.4 mA cm^–2 and a Faradaic efficiency of 88% for up to 120 h.

Chlorine evolution reaction (CER) is a key electrochemical reaction for chemical, pulp, and paper industries, and water treatments. Here, the authors report that an atomically dispersed Pt−N₄ site can catalyse CER with high activity and selectivity under a wide range of Cl^– concentrations and pH.

Photoreduction of permanent gas faces challenges in reactant diffusion and activation at the three-phase interface. Here the authors showed porous metal-organic framework membranes decorated by metal single atoms can boost the photoreduction of CO₂ and O₂ at the high-throughput gas-solid interface.

Enhancing the catalytic activity of noble-metal alloys is frequently accompanied by side reactions. Here, the authors describe an approach to break the scaling relationship for propane dehydrogenation, by assembling single atom alloys, to achieve simultaneous enhancement of propylene selectivity and propane conversion.

Propylene production via propane dehydrogenation demands a highly stable catalyst that works without deactivation even at high temperatures. Here, the authors show that single-atom Pt included in thermally stable intermetallic PtGa works as an active and selective catalyst for propane dehydrogenation even at 600 °C for 96 h without deactivation.

Selective hydrogenolysis of biomass glycerol to propanediol is a promising route for the production of high-value chemicals but remains a challenge. Here, the authors find a PtCu single atom alloy catalyst exhibits remarkably boosted performance with a turnover frequency value of 2.6 × 10³ mol_glycerol·mol_PtCu–SAA⁻¹·h⁻¹.