MANSILLA ROUX, ALEXANDRA, LARA ANGULO, MAYRA ANABEL, SERRANO RUIZ, JUAN CARLOS
No
Nanomaterials
Review
Científica
13/01/2026
001672551000001
Electrochemical CO2 reduction (CO2RR) is a promising route to transform a major greenhouse gas into value-added fuels and chemicals. However, its deployment is still hindered by the sluggish activation of CO2, poor selectivity toward multielectron products, and competition with the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Single-atom catalysts (SACs) have emerged as powerful materials to address these challenges because they combine maximal metal utilization with well-defined coordination environments whose electronic structure can be precisely tuned through metal-support interactions. This minireview summarizes current understanding of how structural, electronic, and chemical features of SAC supports (e.g., porosity, heteroatom doping, vacancies, and surface functionalization) govern the adsorption and conversion of key CO2RR intermediates and thus control product distributions from CO to CH4, CH3OH and C-2(+) species. Particular emphasis is placed on selectivity descriptors (e.g., coordination number, d-band position, binding energies of *COOH and *OCHO) and on rational design strategies that exploit curvature, microenvironment engineering, and electronic metal-support interactions to direct the reaction along desired pathways. Representative SAC systems based primarily on N-doped carbons, complemented by selected examples on oxides and MXenes are discussed in terms of Faradaic efficiency (FE), current density and operational stability under practically relevant conditions. Finally, the review highlights remaining bottlenecks and outlines future directions, including operando spectroscopy and data-driven analysis of dynamic single-site ensembles, machine-learning-assisted DFT screening, scalable mechanochemical synthesis, and integration of SACs into industrially viable electrolyzers for carbon-neutral chemical production.
CO2 electroreduction; single-atom catalysts; metal-support interactions; faradaic efficiency; operando characterization; rational catalyst design