Developing high-efficiency catalytic materials is critical to present and future energy, chemical process, and environmental industries. Nano-catalysts have attracted much attention from scientists and engineers over the past few decades. In the last decade, single-atom catalysts (SACs) have flourished and shown fascinating application prospects. At present, there are obvious differences in structure and mechanism between nano-catalysts and SACs. How to achieve the grand unification of the two in material design and catalytic theory is particularly important for the development of heterogeneous catalysis. Herein, we propose a new concept of isogenous single atom catalysts (I-SACs) that tries to bridge the gap between nano-catalysis and single-atom catalysis. The nano-catalysts with abundant unsaturated low coordination metal atoms are “SACs” themselves, namely the single metal atoms dispersed on isogenous nano-matrixes (so-called I-SACs). The basic characteristics and scientific significances of I-SACs are detailly summarized. The I-SACs would become a significative concept connecting nano-catalysts and SACs in both materials and catalysis sciences. The latent challenges and designing proposals of this newly “atomic nano-system” are pointed out as well.

开发高效催化材料对当前和未来的能源、化工过程和环境工业至关重要。在过去的几十年里，纳米催化剂引起了科学家和工程师的广泛关注。在过去的十年中，单原子催化剂（SAC）蓬勃发展并显示出迷人的应用前景。目前，纳米催化剂与SACs在结构和机理上存在明显差异。如何实现两者在材料设计和催化理论方面的大统一，对于多相催化的发展尤为重要。在此，我们提出了同源单原子催化剂 (I-SAC) 的新概念，试图弥合纳米催化和单原子催化之间的差距。具有丰富的不饱和低配位金属原子的纳米催化剂本身就是“SACs”，即分散在同质纳米基质上的单个金属原子（所谓的I-SACs）。详细总结了I-SACs的基本特征和科学意义。I-SACs 将成为连接材料和催化科学中的纳米催化剂和 SACs 的重要概念。还指出了这种新型“原子纳米系统”的潜在挑战和设计建议。