Recent Progress of Single-Atom Alloys in Heterogeneous Catalytic Reactions

In decades, heterogeneous catalysis has played a more significant role in social progress. However, the exorbitant price and low reserves vastly limit the application of noble metal catalysts, which are extensively used in heterogeneous catalysis. The single-atom-alloy catalysts (SAAs) have been regarded as a crucial way to improve the dispersion ratio of noble metal while maintaining great heterogeneous catalytic performance by dispersing noble metal single atoms on the surface of another metal. Besides the benefit from the metal bonds between noble metals and support metals, SAAs is also a unique method to construct metallic metal single atoms and obtain its characteristic catalytic performance, which is not possessed by other single atoms catalysts with positive electricity metal atoms. Most recently, SAAs have been demonstrated to catalyze a lot of significant heterogeneous reactions. This review will introduce the synthesis methods of SAAs and then summarize their applications in heterogeneous catalysis.