Coordination number regulation of molybdenum single-atom nanozyme peroxidase-like specificity

Wang, Y.*; Jia, G.*; Cui, X.*; Zhao, X.*; Zhang, Q.*; Gu, L.*; Zheng, L.*; Li, L. H.*; Wu, Q.*; Singh, D. J.*; Matsumura, Daiju   ; Tsuji, Takuya  ; Cui, Y.-T.*; Zhao, J.*; Zheng, W.*

Nanozymes are promising alternatives to natural enzymes, but their use remains limited owing to poor specificity. Overcoming this is extremely challenging due to the intrinsic structural complexity of these systems. We report theoretical design and experimental realization of a series of heterogeneous molybdenum single-atom nanozymes (named Mo-N-C), wherein we find that the peroxidase-like specificity is well regulated by the coordination numbers of single Mo sites. The resulting Mo-N-C catalyst shows exclusive peroxidase-like behavior. It achieves this behavior via a homolytic pathway, whereas Mo-N-C and Mo-N-C catalysts have a different heterolytic pathway. The mechanism of this coordination-number-dependent enzymatic specificity is attributed to geometrical structure differences and orientation relationships of the frontier molecular orbitals.