Recent Advances in Designing Efficient Fe-Based Dual-Atom Electrocatalysts: from Material Design to a Mechanism Study

Single-atom catalysts (SACs) have been extensively studied due to their ultrahigh atomic utilization and low cost. However, recent research has pointed out that SACs also meet some drawbacks, such as it being hard to break the severe limitation of the scale relationship on catalytic activity, serious deactivation often happens on single-atomic-site catalysts owing to the low density of active sites, which are easily occupied by intermediates, and a single active center is unable to drive the multielectron and multiproton transfer procedure efficiently. Dual-atom catalysts have effectively addressed these issues through synergistic effects. Among them, Fe-based dual-atom catalysts have been widely researched and applied in fields such as oxygen reduction reaction, oxygen evolution reaction, CO2 reduction reaction (CO2RR), nitrogen reduction reaction, and biological sciences. This Account summarizes recent research progress on Fe-based dual-atom catalysts in various fields, comprehensively introducing various synthesis methods, structural modifications, performance studies, and reaction mechanisms. Based on recent experimental and theoretical research, our goal is to elucidate the structure–performance relationship, highlight the current limitations and challenges of Fe-based multiatom catalysts, and provide a promising research direction for the next generation of iron-based multiatom catalysts. This article opens a useful pathway for the synthesis of nonprecious metal catalysts in the field of electrocatalysis in the future.