The emergence of single atom sites as a frontier research area in catalysis has sparked extensive academic and industrial interest, especially for energy, environmental and chemicals production processes. Single atom catalysts (SACs) have shown remarkable performance in a variety of catalytic reactions, demonstrating high selectivity to the products of interest, long lifespan, high stability and more importantly high atomic metal utilization efficiency. In this review, we unveil in depth insights on development and achievements of SACs, including (a) Chronological progress on SACs development, (b) Recent advances in SACs synthesis, (c) Spatial and temporal SACs characterization techniques, (d) Application of SACs in different energy and chemical production, (e) Environmental and economic aspects of SACs, and (f) Current challenges, promising ideas and future prospects for SACs. On a whole, this review serves to enlighten scientists and engineers in developing fundamental catalytic understanding that can be applied into the future, both for academia or valorizing chemical processes.

单原子位点作为催化领域的前沿研究领域的出现引起了学术界和工业界的广泛兴趣，尤其是在能源、环境和化学品生产过程中。单原子催化剂 (SAC) 在各种催化反应中表现出卓越的性能，表现出对目标产物的高选择性、长寿命、高稳定性以及更重要的高原子金属利用效率。在这篇综述中，我们深入揭示了 SAC 的发展和成就，包括 (a) SAC 发展的时间顺序，(b) SAC 合成的最新进展，(c) 时空 SAC 表征技术，(d) 应用不同能源和化学生产中的 SAC，(e) SAC 的环境和经济方面，以及 (f) 当前的挑战，SAC 的有前途的想法和未来前景。总的来说，这篇综述有助于启发科学家和工程师发展可应用于未来的基本催化理解，无论是学术界还是稳定化学过程。