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emphasize the outlook for catalysts based on MNCs:

(1) The majority of current research is devoted to the development of transition MNCs. However, other
types of NCs, such as alloy NCs, also merit investigation and consideration.

(2) The selectivity of CO reduction by MNCs-based catalysts used to enhance the PCR process is still not
2
good, and most systems can only reduce CO to C products such as CO. Therefore, how to improve the
2
1
selectivity of PCR through material and system design is an important challenge at present.
(3) In the PCR process, MNCs are mostly used as co-catalysts/photosensitizers for semiconductor
nanomaterials. It is hoped that in the future, there will be MNCs that can be used directly in PCR with
excellent performance.

(4) The PCR efficiencies are still lower than commercial targets, and a firm understanding of how these rich
structures of MNCs affect catalytic performance has yet to be fully achieved. The reaction pathways at the
atomic level have yet to be determined. Therefore, further research should be dedicated to enhancing the
activity of PCR processes and monitoring the structure of MNCs during reactions to further establish the
precise correlation between structure and catalytic performance.

DECLARATIONS
Authors’ contributions
Conceptualization, investigation, writing-original draft: Li H
Writing-review & editing: Luo H, Du H
Writing-review & editing, supervision, and funding acquisition: Wang H, Zhu W, Zhou Y

Availability of data and materials
Not applicable.

Financial support and sponsorship
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (22176086), the Natural
Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (BK20210189), State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and
Resource Reuse (PCRR-ZZ-202106), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities
(021114380183, 021114380189, 021114380199), the Research Funds from the Nanjing Science and
Technology Innovation Project for Chinese Scholars Studying Abroad (13006003), the Research Funds from
Frontiers Science Center for Critical Earth Material Cycling of Nanjing University, and Research Funds for
Jiangsu Distinguished Professor. Y.Z. would like to acknowledge the support from the National Natural
Science Foundation of China (22276100), Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province
(SBK2022044384), Key Laboratory for Organic Electronics & Information Displays (GZR2022010010),
Nanjing Science and Technology Innovation Project for Chinese Scholars Studying Abroad
(NJKCZYZZ2022-01), Research Fund for Jiangsu Distinguished Professor (RK030STP22001), and the
Research startup fund of NJUPT (NY221006).

Conflicts of interest
All authors declared that there are no conflicts of interest.

Ethical approval and consent to participate
Not applicable.