Hemilabile single-atom catalysts facilitating photothermal synergetic catalysis

Abstract

Single-atom catalysts (SACs) have been extensively studied in photocatalysis, electrochemistry, and thermocatalysis. However, their utilization in photothermal catalysis is still in the infancy and is worth investigating, as these catalysts are expected to bring further advancement to the field. According to the thermal and non-thermal effects resulting from the interaction of light with matter, where the non-thermal effects mainly refer to the effect of surface-photogenerated carriers on adsorbates (Fig. 1a), photothermal catalysis can be segregated into photothermal heating catalysis, thermally enhanced photocatalysis, photo-enhanced thermocatalysis, and photo-thermo cascade catalysis (Fig. 1b). SACs can capture photo-generated charge carriers to form localized electron/hole-rich centers. Moreover, the external heating or charge carrier recombination in SACs can generate atomic-level hotspots, and the atomic-level synergistic effects (Fig. 1c) resulting from the overlap of thermal and non-thermal effects can significantly accelerate the catalysis kinetics, reduce the reaction temperature limits, and improve the energy conversion efficiency.