Trends and Recent Advances in Defective Nanocatalysts

Material defects that exist in conventional inorganic or organic semiconductors can negatively impact devices. However, in the field of catalysis, the intentional introduction of defects is an advanced material design strategy. When it is impossible to achieve structural perfection of synthetic materials, employing "defect engineering" enables novel properties that would otherwise be unavailable. 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 are to explore 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.

This Research Topic will focus on recent advances in various aspects of emerging defect nanocatalysts, facilitate discussion of new trends, and identify gaps between basic research and practical applications to accelerate nanotechnology development. The Call for Papers is open to all researchers in Nanotechnology and Nanomaterials who focus on defective nanocatalysts. Through this Topic, we aim to provide a collection of cutting-edge research and review articles related to the physical, chemical, and biological aspects of defective nanocatalysts and their promising applications.

We welcome the submission of Original Research, Review, Mini Review, and Perspective articles on themes including, but not limited to:

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

Keywords: Defective Nanocatalysts, defect chemistry, Low-dimensional nanomaterials, heterostructures, nanocomposites, nanophotonics

Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.