Towards Single-Site and Single-Atom Photo- and Electrocatalysis

Dear Colleagues, 

The reactions of water splitting (to generate H₂) and CO₂ reduction (to produce high-value chemicals) have been recognized as potential game-changers in the ongoing economic transition to sustainable development. Both processes can be accessed through photo- and electrocatalysis, however—as they involve highly demanding multielectron redox reactions—a delicate design of the catalytic systems is necessary to achieve satisfactory performance. Besides, given the challenging selectivity issues posed by the CO₂ reduction reaction, special attention need to be paid to the structure and location of the active sites responsible for a particular conversion.

Here—in light of the general difficulty to identify active surface sites of common heterogeneous catalysts and co-catalysts – recent years saw the infiltration of the concepts of “single-site” and “single-atom” catalysis into the fields of heterogeneous photo- and electrocatalysis. Not only do such systems allow for better atom-utilization efficiency, but they also enable access to better-defined catalytic sites, which ultimately helps to unravel synthesis-structure-performance space and allows for the development of advanced photo- and electrocatalysts by design.

In order to facilitate the development of this approach and assist in knowledge transfer from thermal heterogeneous catalysis to photo- and electrocatalytic systems, we would like to announce this special issue. Its focus lies in recent advances in preparation, characterization, and theoretical description of single-site and single-atom (co-)catalysts for their use in photocatalytic, electrocatalytic, and photoelectrocatalytic applications.

Preferred contributions:

This Special Issue will embrace any high-quality work that is devoted to:

• synthesis approaches that aim to facilitate the formation of single-sites or explore strategies of their stabilization;

• characterization methods that help to unravel the structure of the surface sites or provide insights into their formation, stability, and dynamic nature;

• theoretical calculations that either provide insights into the performance of the catalytic systems or shed light on some of the experimental data.

We would like to encourage the authors to discuss the obtained characterization and performance data in light of the single-site or single-atom concept so that ideally a link between synthesis/structure and activity of these sites can be made by for example comparing the performance with reference systems where, for example, common bulky (co-)catalysts are used.

Besides, we welcome reviews. These are supposed to provide a background for the topic and talk about the concept of single-site and singe-atom catalysis and its conceptual extension to photocatalytic and electrocatalytic applications. A review can also cover the recent and most prominent literature on the topic.

Dr. Alexey Cherevan
Dr. Yujin Tong
Guest Editors

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