Intermediate spillover-enabled cooperation in single-atom catalysts
Abstract
The linear scaling relationships between multiple intermediates constrain catalytic performance, especially in single-atom catalysts (SACs) with isolated sites. This review focuses on overcoming this limitation by constructing SACs-based cooperative systems that exploit the directional spillover of key intermediates between functionally distinct sites. We systematically summarize how hydrogen-, oxygen-, carbon-, and nitrogen intermediates spillover between four representative cooperation paradigms, including multi-center SACs, SACs-nanoparticle hybrids, SACs-support interaction, and single-atom alloys. Through functional decoupling and site-to-site relay, these strategies reduce kinetic barriers of rate-determining steps and reconstruct reaction pathways. Beyond mitigating activity-selectivity-stability trade-offs of SACs, intermediate spillover mechanism moves catalyst design from trial-and-error approaches toward mechanism-guided engineering.
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BibTeX
@article{shan2026intermediate,
title = {{Intermediate spillover-enabled cooperation in single-atom catalysts}},
author = {Minqi Shan and Jinliang Yuan and Tianyu Zhang},
journal = {Communications Chemistry},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.1038/s42004-026-02158-5},
url = {https://www.nature.com/articles/s42004-026-02158-5},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Intermediate spillover-enabled cooperation in single-atom catalysts
AU - Minqi Shan
AU - Jinliang Yuan
AU - Tianyu Zhang
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/28
JO - Communications Chemistry
DO - 10.1038/s42004-026-02158-5
UR - https://www.nature.com/articles/s42004-026-02158-5
AB - The linear scaling relationships between multiple intermediates constrain catalytic performance, especially in single-atom catalysts (SACs) with isolated sites. This review focuses on overcoming this limitation by constructing SACs-based cooperative systems that exploit the directional spillover of key intermediates between functionally distinct sites. We systematically summarize how hydrogen-, oxygen-, carbon-, and nitrogen intermediates spillover between four representative cooperation paradigms, including multi-center SACs, SACs-nanoparticle hybrids, SACs-support interaction, and single-atom alloys. Through functional decoupling and site-to-site relay, these strategies reduce kinetic barriers of rate-determining steps and reconstruct reaction pathways. Beyond mitigating activity-selectivity-stability trade-offs of SACs, intermediate spillover mechanism moves catalyst design from trial-and-error approaches toward mechanism-guided engineering.
SN - 2399-3669
ER -