Shaojun Guo's team from the School of Materials Science and Engineering published a review in Nature Reviews Chemistry: Optimizing Semiconductor-Metal Monogen...

Artificial photosynthesis (photocatalysis) is an energy conversion method that converts clean solar energy
into chemical fuels that can be stored.
However, the current application of photocatalytic technology has long been subject to its low energy conversion efficiency, and the main reasons include: 1) serious photogenerated electron-hole pair recombination leads to a small number of effective photogenerated charges; 2) The migration barrier of photogenerated charge between photocatalyst and cocatalyst is large, which limits the separation of photogenerated electron-hole pairs; 3) The catalytic reaction overpotential on the surface of the cocatalyst is too high, which limits the product generation rate
.
In recent years, metal atomic cocatalysts have shown great application potential
in photocatalytic water splitting hydrogen production, high value-added fuel synthesis and environmental governance due to their advantages of controllable coordination structure, short-range electron transfer and almost no effect on the light absorption of carrier semiconductors compared with traditional nanoparticle cocatalysts.

Professor Guo Shaojun's team from the School of Materials Science and Engineering has long been committed to the design, synthesis, catalytic performance regulation and advanced device research of atom-scale photocatalytic materials, explored the regulation law of the coordination structure of metal single atoms on photocatalytic activity, selectivity and stability, and made a series of progress in the fields of controllable preparation and significant improvement of metal single atom photocatalytic materials and photosynthesis of solar fuel (Chem 2021, 7, 1033; Nat.
Commun.
2021, 12, 4412； Adv.
Mater.
2020, 32, 1904249；Angew.
Chem.
Int.
Ed.
2020, 59, 232；Angew.
Chem.
Int.
Ed.
2019, 58, 14184；Sci.
China Chem.
2021, 64, 1716；Sci.
Bull.
2020, 65, 720；ACS Catal.
2020, 10, 9109）
。

Based on the previous research, the team was recently invited by Nature Reviews Chemistry to conduct an in-depth discussion and summary of the interaction between semiconductors and metal monatoms in metal monoatomic photocatalysts at the atomic and electron scales (as shown in the figure below).

。 This paper introduces the basic physicochemical configuration of the interaction between semiconductor photocatalysts and metal single atoms, systematically summarizes the methods for constructing the interaction between semiconductor photocatalysts and metal single atoms, discusses the characteristics and limitations of various methods, and distinguishes and defines the interaction models between various typical semiconductor photocatalysts and metal single atoms.
The decisive role of ligand effect on the electronic and catalytic properties of metal monatomic cocatalysts under the interaction between semiconductor photocatalysts and metal monatoms was highlighted.
The application of the interaction between semiconductor photocatalysts and metal monocytes in photocatalytic water splitting to hydrogen production, carbon dioxide reduction and organic matter synthesis was introduced.
Finally, the future development direction of metal single-atom photocatalysts is predicted and prospected
.
The results were published online in Nature Review: Chemistry on October 24, 2022 ("Optimizing the semiconductor–metal-single-atom interaction for photocatalytic reactivity".
Nature Reviews Chemistry 2022, doi: 10.
1038/s41570-022-00434-1）

Dr.
Peng Zhou is the first author of the paper, and Guo Shaojun is the only corresponding author
of the paper.
This work has been supported
by the National Science Foundation for Outstanding Young Scholars, the Tencent Science Exploration Award, the Beijing Natural Science Foundation Key Research Project, and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation.