The exploitation of renewable energy as well as the elimination of the harmful impact of excessive carbon emission are worldwide concerns for sustainable development of the ecological environment on earth. To address that, the technologies regarding energy conversion systems, such as water splitting and electroreduction of carbon dioxide, have attracted significant attention for a few decades. Yet, to date, the production of green fuels and/or high energy density chemicals like hydrogen, methane, and ethanol, are still suffering from many drawbacks including high energy consumption, low selectivity, and sluggish reaction rate. In this regard, nanostructured bimetallic materials that is capable of taking the full benefits of the coupling effects between different elements/components with structure modification in nanoscale are considered as a promising strategy for high-performance electrocatalysts. Herein, this review aims to outline the important progress of these nanostructured bimetallic electrocatalysts. It starts with the introduction of some important fundamental background knowledge about the reaction mechanism to understand how these reactions happen. Subsequently, we summarize the most recent progress regarding how the nanostructured bimetallic electrocatalysts manipulate the activity and selectivity of catalytic reactions in the order of bimetallic alloying effect, interface/substrate effect of bi-component electrocatalyst, and nanostructuring effect.

中文翻译：

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用于分解水和电还原二氧化碳的纳米结构双金属电催化剂的最新进展

开发可再生能源以及消除过度碳排放的有害影响，是地球生态环境可持续发展的世界性关注。为了解决这个问题，几十年来，关于能量转换系统的技术，如水分解和二氧化碳的电还原，引起了人们的极大关注。然而，迄今为止，绿色燃料和/或氢气、甲烷和乙醇等高能量密度化学品的生产仍存在许多缺点，包括高能耗、低选择性和反应速度缓慢。在这方面，纳米结构的双金属材料能够充分利用不同元素/组分之间的耦合效应，并在纳米尺度上进行结构修饰，被认为是高性能电催化剂的一种有前途的策略。在此，本综述旨在概述这些纳米结构双金属电催化剂的重要进展。它首先介绍了一些关于反应机制的重要基础背景知识，以了解这些反应是如何发生的。随后，我们总结了纳米结构双金属电催化剂如何按照双金属合金化效应、双组分电催化剂的界面/基底效应和纳米结构效应的顺序操纵催化反应的活性和选择性的最新进展。