Review of covalent organic frameworks for single-site photocatalysis and electrocatalysis

Covalent organic frameworks (COFs) represent a burgeoning category of highly tunable crystalline porous materials, which have garnered significant attention as promising platforms for designing novel photo- and electrocatalysts. Single-site catalysis holds paramount importance in revealing the catalytic reaction mechanism and enhancing catalytic performance because of the maximum utilization of metal atoms and presence of a definite active center. Given the distinct advantages of single-site catalysts, such as single metal ions, single atoms, single active sites, and metal clusters, and COFs materials, there is a current surge of interest in using COFs materials as support materials to anchor highly dispersed single-sites. Consequently, the design and preparation of COF-based single-site catalysts have emerged as a prominent research topic in the fields of photo- and electrocatalysis, to address the pressing environmental and energy issues. This review provides an overview of the development of COF-based single-site photo- and electrocatalysts. Advanced applications of COF-based single-site photo- and electrocatalysts are comprehensively summarized and reviewed. Additionally, the review addresses the challenges faced by COF-based single-site photo- and electrocatalysts and discusses their future development trends. We aim to provide new insights into the application of COF-based single-site materials in photo- and electrocatalysis and further promote the development of catalytic science.