Synergetic Catalysis of Magnetic Single-Atom Catalysts Confined in Graphitic-CN/CeO(111) Heterojunction for CO Oxidization.

Magnetic single-atom catalysts (MSAC), due to the intrinsic spin degree of freedom, are of particular importance relative to other conventional SAC for applications in various catalytic processes, especially in those cases that involve spin-triplet O. However, the bottleneck issue in this field is the clustering of the SAC during the processes. Here using first-principles calculations we predict that Mn atoms can be readily confined in the interface of the porous g-CN/CeO(111) heterostructure, forming high-performance MSAC for O activation via a delicate synergetic mechanism of charge transfer, mainly provided by the p-block g-CN overlayer mediated by the d-block Mn active site, and spin selection, preserved mainly through active participation of the f-block Ce atoms and/or g-CN, which effectively promotes the CO oxidization. Such a recipe is also demonstrated to be valid for V- and Nb-MSACs, which may shed new light on the design of highly efficient MSACs for various important chemical processes wherein spin-selection matters.