Trends and Recent Advances in Defective Nanocatalysts

Dear Colleagues,

Defects are ubiquitous in crystals and have a significant impact on both the physical and chemical properties of crystals. It is also inevitable that some atoms deviate from their ideal positions during the synthesis of crystal structures. Defects in materials are known to have a negative effect on the traditional device performance of semiconductors. However, in the opposite way, the intentional introduction of defects is an advanced material design strategy in the field of electrochemical catalysis. Since defects act as highly electrochemically active sites and efficiently tune the electronic structure of electrocatalysts, defect engineering demonstrates great potential to enhance the electrocatalytic activity of materials. Therefore, there is growing interest in “defect engineering” to take advantage of defect benefits in electrochemical applications. In fact, it is one of the most critical means of optimizing electrocatalytic performance. Various developed defect catalysts have played a huge role in energy, electronics, biology, environment, sensing and many other fields. Future challenges for catalyst defect engineering include exploring novel synthetic protocols and building blocks to enable defined materials with high precision and reproducibility, while developing more sophisticated methods to detect, characterize, and theoretically understand structure–activity relationships.

Typically, defects on nanomaterials can be categorized into four types: (1) zero-dimensional (0D) defects (e.g., vacancies and heteroatomic doping), (2) one-dimensional (1D) defects (e.g., edge dislocation and screw dislocation), (3) two-dimensional (2D) defects, (e.g., boundaries and stacking faults), and (4) three-dimensional (3D) defects (e.g., heterostructures, lattice disorder, voids, and cracks). This demonstrates that effective manipulation of material defects in multiple spatial dimensions can achieve outstanding effects beyond existing technologies. This Special Issue will focus on recent advances in various aspects of emerging defect catalysts, facilitate the discussion of new trends, and identify gaps between basic research and practical applications to accelerate nanoscience development. The call for papers is open to all researchers in nanoscience and nanomaterials who focus on defective catalysts. We hope that this Special Issue will provide a collection of cutting-edge research and review articles related to the physical, chemical, and biological aspects of defective catalysts and their promising applications.

Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Fundamental defect chemistry;
• Advanced synthesis of defective nanomaterials;
• Low-dimensional defective materials;
• Atomic defect engineering;
• Advanced characterization and imaging of atomic defects;
• In situ technologies and dynamic evolution of active sites;
• Novel heterostructures, nano composites and high entropy alloys;
• Electrochemistry and nanophotonics of defective materials;
• Defective catalysts for energy, environment, and biomedical applications;
• Nanoscale modelling and calculations.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Yang Luo
Dr. Chao Huang
Guest Editors

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• cutting-edge nanomaterials
• material defects
• defect engineering
• advanced synthesis
• catalysts
• advanced characterization
• nanomaterials