Oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) are the core reactions of a series of advanced modern energy and conversion technologies, such as fuel cells and metal-air cells. Among all kinds of oxygen electrocatalysts that have been reported, single-atom catalysts (SACs) offer great development potential because of their nearly 100% atomic utilization, unsaturated coordination environment, and tunable electronic structure. In recent years, numerous SACs with enriched active centers and asymmetric coordination have been successfully constructed by regulating their coordination environment and electronic structure, which has brought the development of atomic catalysts to a new level. This paper reviews the improvement of SACs brought by atom-level interface engineering. It starts with the introduction of advanced techniques for the characterizations of SACs. Subsequently, different design strategies that are applied to adjust the metal active center and first coordination sphere of SACs and then enhance their oxygen electrocatalysis performance are systematically illustrated. Finally, the future development of SACs toward ORR and OER is discussed and prospected.
Keywords: active center; atomic interface modification; electrocatalysis; single-atom catalysts; the first coordination sphere.
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