Single atom catalysts (SACs) harbor a potential to exceed nanoparticle catalysts in terms of activity, stability and selectivity in a growing number of chemical reactions. Although their investigation is attracting significant attention, important fundamental questions focusing on key physicochemical properties of SACs (e. g., structure – property relationships, structural dynamics, reaction‐driven restructuring) remain unanswered. A main challenge for research in the field is how to reliably characterize the environments of single atoms in the presence of complicating factors such as low weight loadings, strong metal‐support interactions, and atomic and multiscale heterogeneity of bonding in the single atom sites. This review addresses this challenge – identifying catalytically relevant features of physicochemical properties of single atoms (charge state, electronic structure, atomic configuration, bonding interactions with a support) and surveying advanced tools/methods for characterizing them. The review places a strong emphasis on multimodal methods exploiting X‐ray absorption, emission and photoelectron spectroscopies, and provides several examples from the authors’ research that demonstrate their use as powerful tools for SAC characterization.

Matthew Kottwitz

Yuanyuan Li

Haodong Wang

Anatoly I. Frenkel

Ralph G. Nuzzo

Chemistry–Methods

Chemistry-Methods

Chemistry Methods

Single Atom Catalysts: A Review of Characterization Methods

单原子催化剂：表征方法综述

Single Atom Catalysts: A Review of Characterization Methods

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Journal Info

Category	Quartile
CHEMISTRY, MULTIDISCIPLINARY	1