Beyond Crystallinity: How Amorphous Structures Dictate Performance in Electrocatalysis

Electrocatalysis has proven remarkable effectiveness in various fields, such as energy conversion and storage, chemical synthesis, and environmental remediation. Catalysts play a crucial role in determining the efficiency of electrocatalytic reactions. In the past decades, amorphous electrocatalysts have attracted significant attention owing to their structural disorder-induced advantages, such as abundant active sites, high structural flexibility, and unique electronic structure. More recently, amorphous-crystalline heterophase electrocatalysts have been proven even more effective because of the synergy between different phases. Herein, the common synthesis methods and fundamental features of amorphous-based structures are outlined, including amorphous phase and amorphous-crystalline dual-phase nanomaterials. Importantly, the correlations between the structural characteristics of amorphous-based nanomaterials and their electrocatalytic performance are interpreted in depth, with the focus on newly emerged materials in recent years and energy-related electrocatalytic reactions. Finally, perspectives on the remaining challenges and potential research directions in future are also provided.