Atomically Precise Alloy Nanoclusters Steering Photocatalysis

Atomically precise metal nanoclusters (NCs) demonstrate the unprecedented merits including unique atomic stacking pattern, quantum confinement effect, abundant active sites, and discrete energy band structure, filling the gap between single atoms and conventional metal nanocrystals. Integrating two metals into one nanocluster unit to craft bimetallic NCs (BNCs) significantly endow metal NCs with fascinating physicochemical properties, electronic structures, and metal-ligand interaction mechanisms through the bimetallic cooperative synergy. Nevertheless, there has still been a lack of comprehensive, insightful and timely overview on BNCs-based photoredox catalysis. Herein, this review recaps the category, synthetic strategies and characterization methods of a new generation of atomically precise BNCs, along with their recent exciting cutting-edge progress in diverse photoredox catalysis, including photocatalytic hydrogen production, CO₂ reduction, selective organic transformation and environmental remediation. The charge transfer mechanisms and insight into structure-activity correlation in different redox catalysis reactions are elucidated. Eventually, future prospects and challenging tasks in this booming research field are discussed. The current review is expected to timely provide an emerging roadmap for customizing novel BNCs as a versatile photocatalyst platform toward solar energy conversion.