Creating Atomic Ordering in Electrocatalysis

Catalysis always proceeds in a chaotic fashion. Therefore, identifying the working principles of heterogeneous catalysts is a challenging task. Creating atomic order in heterogeneous catalysts simplifies this task and also offers new opportunities for rationally designing active sites to manipulate catalytic performance. The recent rapid advances in heterogeneous electrocatalysis have led to exciting progress in the construction of atomically ordered materials. Here, the latest progress in electrocatalysts with the periodic atomic arrangement, including intermetallic compounds with long‐range order and metal atom‐array catalysts with short‐range order is summarized. The synthesis principles and the intriguing physical and chemical properties of these electrocatalysts are discussed. Furthermore, the compelling prospects of atomically ordered catalysts in the frontier of catalyst research are outlined. Rationally designing new heterogeneous catalysts with well‐defined atomic features simplifies catalysis research and may deliver novel catalytic properties. This perspective reviews an emerging class of heterogeneous catalysts, named metal atom‐array catalysts (MACs), with tunable interatomic distance and electronic properties, a strong synergy between atoms, and the predictive nature of the atomic arrangement. The synthesis principle and promising development directions of MACs are discussed.