Coordination environment manipulation of single atom catalysts: Regulation strategies, characterization techniques and applications

•Coordination environment manipulation of SACs is systematically reviewed.•The progress in regulation strategies for coordination environment is summarized.•Characterization techniques for coordination environment are summarized.•Current challenges in coordination environment manipulation of SACs are proposed.•Future perspectives of coordination environment manipulation are put forward. Single atom catalysts (SACs) provide a competitive strategy for addressing energy shortages and environmental pollution issues. The coordination environment (CE) almost determines the catalytic performance, selectivity and robustness of SACs. In the past few years, a large number of strategies have been developed to precisely manipulate the CE of SACs. Further identification and manipulation of the CE of SACs is the prerequisite for understanding the geometric structure and physicochemical properties of SACs at the atomic scale. Therefore, the regulation strategies for the CE of SACs were summarized to comprehensively demonstrate the latest understanding of the structure–activity relationship, especially in terms of geometric information and chemical environment configuration. On this basis, the mainstream technologies for characterizing the CE of SACs were reviewed, in order to get a deeper understanding of the microenvironment-activity relationship of SACs. Subsequently, the application cases of CE manipulation of SACs in energy and environmental catalysis were summarized. Finally, the existing challenges and future perspectives for the CE manipulation of SACs were proposed. We believe that this paper will provide meaningful value for the microenvironment manipulation of SACs, and realize the ultimate commercial application of SACs.