Single-Atom Metal Catalysts for Catalytic Chemical Conversion of Biomass to Chemicals and Fuels

Among all renewable energy sources (e.g., solar energy, wind, and biomass), biomass is the only organic carbon resource which has great potential to partly replace nonrenewable fossil resources to produce high value-added chemicals and biofuels. Single-atom catalysts (SACs) have shown compelling prospects and arguably become one of the most active research fields in biomass chemical catalysis due to their fascinating strengths in maximum atomic utilization, highly efficient catalytic reactivity, high selectivity, and good stability. Numerous achievements about the SACs have recently been amassed, including advanced synthesis methods, characterization techniques, and theoretical calculation, allowing us to forecast their working mechanisms and the catalytic roles of metals and coordination sites in the catalytic process. Based on the relevant literatures on SACs over the past few years, this review summarizes the preparation methods of SACs and their catalysis applications for biomass conversions with a special focus on the structure–activity relationship and catalytic reaction mechanism as well as prospects for the future developments of SACs. This review provides fundamental information for the development of the SACs in biomass valorization, clearly stimulating the development in this emerging research field.