Strong Metal-Support Interactions through Sulfur-Anchoring of Metal Catalysts on Carbon Supports

In supported metal catalysts, the supports would strongly interact with the metal components instead of just acting as a carrier, which greatly affects both of their synthesis and catalytic activity, selectivity, and stability. Carbon is considered as very important but inert support and thus hard to induce strong metal-support interaction (SMSI). This mini-review highlights that sulfur—a documented poison reagent for metal catalysts—when doped in a carbon supports can induce diverse SMSI phenomenon, including electronic metal-support interaction (EMSI), classic SMSI, and reactive metal-support interaction (RMSI). These SMSI between metal and sulfur-doped carbon (S−C) supports enables the catalysts with extraordinary resistance to sintering at high temperatures of up to 1100 °C, which allows the general synthesis of single-atom, alloy cluster, and intermetallic compound catalysts with high dispersion and metal loading for a variety of applications.