Development and Application of Defective Nanocatalysts

Dear Colleagues,

Defects are ubiquitous in crystals and have a significant impact on both the physical and chemical properties of crystals. It is also inevitable that some atoms deviate from their ideal positions during the synthesis of crystal structures. Defects in materials are known to have a negative effect on the traditional performance of semiconductors. However, the intentional introduction of defects is an advanced material design strategy in the field of electrochemical catalysis. Since defects act as highly electrochemically active sites and efficiently tune the electronic structure of electrocatalysts, defect engineering could enhance the electrocatalytic activity of materials. Therefore, there is a growing interest in “defect engineering”, which could exploit the benefit of defects in electrochemical applications. In fact, it is an important means of optimizing electrocatalytic performance. Various defect catalysts have played a significant role in energy, electronics, biology, environment, sensing and many other fields. Future challenges regarding the engineering of catalyst defects include the exploration of novel synthetic protocols and building blocks to produce defined materials with high precision and reproducibility, while developing more sophisticated methods to detect, characterize, and theoretically understand structure–activity relationships.

Typically, defects on nanomaterials can be categorized into four types: (1) zero-dimensional (0D) defects (e.g., vacancies and heteroatomic doping), (2) one-dimensional (1D) defects (e.g., edge dislocation and screw dislocation), (3) two-dimensional (2D) defects, (e.g., boundaries and stacking faults), and (4) three-dimensional (3D) defects (e.g., heterostructures, lattice disorder, voids, and cracks). This demonstrates that the effective manipulation of material defects in multiple spatial dimensions can achieve outstanding effects beyond existing technologies. This Special Issue will focus on recent advances in defect catalysts, facilitate the discussion of new trends, and identify gaps between basic research and practical applications to accelerate the development of nanoscience. We therefore invite all researchers involved in the field of nanoscience and nanomaterials and focusing on defective catalysts to submit contributions. We hope that this Special Issue will provide a collection of innovative research and review articles related to the physical, chemical, and biological aspects of defective catalysts.

The scope of this Special Issue includes, but is not limited to, the following topics:

• Fundamental defect chemistry’
• Advanced synthesis of defective nanomaterials;
• Low-dimensional defective materials;
• Atomic defect engineering;
• Advanced characterization and imaging of atomic defects;
• In situ technologies and the dynamic evolution of active sites;
• Novel heterostructures, nano composites and high entropy alloys;
• Electrochemistry and nanophotonics of defective materials;
• Defective catalysts for energy, environment, and biomedical applications;
• Nanoscale modelling and calculations.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Yang Luo
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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• cutting-edge nanomaterials
• material defects
• defect engineering
• advanced synthesis
• catalysts
• advanced characterization

• Trends and Recent Advances in Defective Nanocatalysts in Nanomaterials (1 article)