Nanozymes with atomically dispersed metal centers: Structure–activity relationships and biomedical applications

Nanozymes has become a research hotspot in biomedical field because of its great enzyme-like catalytic performance and biological characteristics. As a potential substitute for natural enzyme, nanozymes have the advantages of low cost, strong catalytic performance and good stability. The discovery of nanozymes with atomically dispersed metal centers has attracted the focus of nanozymes research to the atomic level. Compared with nanoparticles nanozymes, the single-atom nanozymes with atomically dispersed single-metal sites and the atomically dispersed cluster nanozymes with atomically dispersed multi-metal sites have higher atomic utilization rate and thus have stronger catalytic performance. In addition, atomically dispersed active centers are beneficial to the regulation of catalytic performance and the study of structure–activity relationship. At present, the research on nanozymes with atomically dispersed metal centers has achieved many important results and showed considerable application value in biomedical field. This review presents the research progress of nanozymes with atomically dispersed metal centers and systematically summarizes their structure–activity relationships and biomedical applications. Finally, we discuss the current opportunities and challenges of nanozymes with atomically dispersed metal centers.