Comprehensive Understandings into Complete Reconstruction of Precatalysts: Synthesis, Applications, and Characterizations

Reconstruction induced by external environment (such as applied voltage bias and test electrolytes) changes catalyst component and catalytic behaviors. Investigations of complete reconstruction in energy conversion recently receive intensive attention, which promote the targeted design of top-performance materials with maximum component utilization and good stability. However, the advantages of complete reconstruction, its design strategies, and extensive applications have not achieved the profound understandings and summaries it deserves. Here, this review systematically summarizes several important advances in complete reconstruction for the first time, which includes 1) fundamental understandings of complete reconstruction, the characteristics and advantages of completely reconstructed catalysts, and their design principles, 2) types of reconstruction-involved precatalysts for oxygen evolution reaction catalysis in wide pH solution, and origins of limited reconstruction degree as well as design strategies/principles toward complete reconstruction, 3) complete reconstruction for novel material synthesis and other electrocatalysis fields, and 4) advanced in situ/operando or multiangle/level characterization techniques to capture the dynamic reconstruction processes and real catalytic contributors. Finally, the existing major challenges and unexplored/unsolved issues on studying the reconstruction chemistry are summarized, and an outlook for the further development of complete reconstruction is briefly proposed. This review will arouse the attention on complete reconstruction materials and their applications in diverse fields.