Key Takeaways & Executive Findings
- •• Single-atom nanozymes (SANs) offer atomically dispersed active sites, high atom utilization, and tunable coordination, overcoming limitations of conventional nanozymes. • The review systematically covers synthesis strategies for SANs, including template, pyrolysis, and wet-chemistry methods. • SANs show significant potential in monitoring and controlling environmental pollutants, such as heavy metals, organic dyes, and pesticides. • Challenges remain in scalable production, stability, and selectivity, but future prospects include multifunctional SANs and integration with sensing platforms.
Abstract
As environmental pollutants pose a serious threat to socioeconomic and environmental health, the development of simple, efficient, accurate and cost-effective methods for pollution monitoring and control remains a major challenge, but it is an unavoidable issue. In the past decade, the artificial nanozymes have been widely used for environmental pollutant monitoring and control, because of their low cost, high stability, easy mass production, etc. However, the conventional nanozyme technology faces significant challenges in terms of difficulty in regulating the exposed crystal surface, complex composition, low catalytic activity, etc. In contrast, the emerging single-atom nanozymes (SANs) have attracted much attention in the field of environmental monitoring and control, due to their multiple advantages of atomically dispersed active sites, high atom utilization efficiency, tunable coordination environment, etc. To date, the insufficient efforts have been made to comprehensively characterize the applications of SANs in the monitoring and control of environmental pollutants. Building on the recent advances in the field, this review systematically summarizes the main synthesis methods of SANs and highlights their advances in the monitoring and control of environmental pollutants. Finally, we critically evaluate the limitations and challenges of SANs, and provide the insights into their future prospects for the monitoring and control of environmental pollutants.
1. Introduction
With the rapid development of the modern social economy, the problem of environmental pollution has become more and more increasingly prominent for enabling environmental health to be one of the biggest challenges faced by human beings [1]. According to statistics, there are many kinds of environmental pollutants, such as phenolic & gaseous carcinogens, organic dyes, pesticide residues, medical drug residues, microbial hazards, and heavy metals. Among them, the typical carcinogens such as harmful phenols and gaseous substances could enter the human body through air, water, food chain, whose long-term exposure can lead to the serious adverse effects like cancer [2]. Organic dyes usually affect the levels of salinity and oxygen in water [3, 4]; the residual pesticides and medical drugs could pollute the ecosystem [5, 6], while the microbial hazards are capable of causing a series of biological diseases [7]. Moreover, the residual heavy metals such as mercury and lead are difficult to degrade, which may also cause the cardiovascular and neurological diseases [8]. Under this background, it is particularly important and urgent to strengthen the monitoring and control of environmental pollutants for safeguarding environmental and public health.
Recently, as an emerging nanotechnology, artificial nanozymes of all kinds have been widely engineered in the monitoring and control of environmental pollutants with good results, owing to their features of low cost, high stability, easy mass production, etc. [7, 9, 10]. In spite of this, the conventional nanozyme technology faces challenges such as difficulty in regulating the exposed crystal surface, complex composition, low catalytic activity ascribable to the low density of active sites, and difficulty in precise regulation. [11]. In contrast, SANs are new type of artificial nanozymes with the single metal atom as the active center, exhibiting the comparable catalytic activity to that of natural metalloenzymes [12]. It has many impressive advantages over conventional nanozymes, three of which are as follows: (1) The active sites of SANs are highly dispersed, which can increase the contact between the substrate and the active sites, achieving the efficient substrate reactions and high catalytic activity to accelerate the degradation reaction of organic pollutants in the environment and enhance the treatment efficiency [11]. (2) The outer electron cloud distribution of SANs can be precisely tuned by adjusting the coordination environment, leading to enhanced selectivity and activity. (3) The high atom utilization efficiency of SANs reduces the cost of noble metal catalysts, making them economically viable for large-scale applications.
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Guojian Wu, Si Li, Linpin Luo, Yuechun Li, Wentao Zhang, Heng Wang, Sha Liu, Chenxing Du, Jianlong Wang, Jie Cheng, Yongning Wu, Yizhong Shen (2025). Exploring Single-Atom Nanozymes Toward Environmental Pollutants: Monitoring and Control. Nano-Micro Letters. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40820-025-01734-z
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Frequently Asked Questions
What are single-atom nanozymes (SANs)?
Single-atom nanozymes are artificial enzymes with isolated single metal atoms as active sites, mimicking the catalytic activity of natural enzymes. They offer high atom utilization, tunable coordination, and excellent catalytic performance.
How are single-atom nanozymes synthesized?
Common synthesis methods include pyrolysis of metal-organic frameworks, atomic layer deposition, wet-chemistry approaches, and template-assisted methods, which ensure the dispersion of single atoms on supports.
What are the advantages of SANs over conventional nanozymes?
SANs exhibit higher catalytic activity, better selectivity, and stability due to atomically dispersed active sites and tunable coordination environments, overcoming limitations like low active site density and complex composition.
How can SANs be used for environmental pollutant monitoring?
SANs can be integrated into sensors for colorimetric, electrochemical, or fluorescent detection of pollutants like heavy metals, pesticides, and organic dyes, offering high sensitivity and selectivity.
What are the challenges and future prospects of SANs?
Challenges include scalable synthesis, long-term stability, and selectivity in complex matrices. Future prospects involve multifunctional SANs, machine learning-assisted design, and real-world applications in environmental remediation.
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