Sub-nanomaterials for Photo/Electro-catalytic CO2 Reduction: Achievements, Challenges, and Opportunities

With the increasing dilemma of energy crisis and climate change caused by excessive greenhouse gas emissions, it is an effective way to design low-cost and efficient catalysts to recycle CO 2 into value-added chemicals and fuels to solve these problems. Downsizing catalysts close to a single crystal cell, sub-nanomaterials(SNMs) show unique size-dependent properties and great potential applications in CO 2 reduction reaction (CO 2 RR) compared with conventional nanomaterials. In this review, basic principles of CO 2 RR and brief classification of SNMs are elucidated. Then, recent advances of SNMs in photo/electrocatalytic CO 2 reduction are comprehensively summarized. Finally, the current challenges and future outlooks are emphasized to pave the development of CO 2 RR on SNMs. It is anticipated that this review would provide new insights to this unique scale and guided information on rational construction of SNMs for photo/electrocatalytic CO 2 RR.