Strain-Engineered Noble Metal Nanocatalysts for Electrocatalytic Applications

Strain engineering plays a pivotal role in optimizing noble metal-based electrocatalysts, which are essential for advancing sustainable energy technologies. This review highlights recent breakthroughs extending beyond conventional approaches, focusing on two key innovations: 1) Core volume manipulation (CVM) in core–shell structures, enabling precise, dynamic, and reversible strain control via core contraction/expansion; 2) Stabilized strain architectures integrating strong interfacial interactions to construct exceptionally durable catalytic systems. CVM facilitates tunable strain, whereas strong interfacial interactions address strain relaxation crucially, ensuring long-term durability under harsh conditions. These advanced strategies deliver exceptional performance in key reactions, including oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), methanol oxidation reaction (MOR), and CO₂ reduction reaction (CO₂RR), achieving significant enhancements in mass activity and dramatically improved stability over benchmark catalysts. It is critically discuss how these complementary strategies, CVM for tunability and strong interfacial interactions for inherent stability, offer unprecedented control and durability. Finally, current challenges and future directions for next-generation high-performance, durable electrocatalysts are outlined.