Reaction Mechanisms and Kinetics of Nanozymes: Insights from Theory and Computation

“Nanozymes” usually refers to inorganic nanomaterials with enzyme-like catalytic activities. The research into nanozymes is one of the hot topics on the horizon of interdisciplinary science involving materials, chemistry, and biology. Although great progress has been made in the design, synthesis, characterization, and application of nanozymes, the study of the underlying microscopic mechanisms and kinetics is still not straightforward. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations compute the potential energy surfaces along the reaction coordinates for chemical reactions, which can give atomistic-level insights into the micro-mechanisms and kinetics for nanozymes. Therefore, DFT calculations have been playing an increasingly important role in exploring the mechanisms and kinetics for nanozymes in the past years. The calculations either predict the microscopic details for the catalytic processes to complement the experiments or further develop theoretical models to depict the physicochemical rules. In this review, the corresponding research progress is summarized. Particularly, the review focuses on the computational studies that closely interplay with the experiments. The relevant experimental results without DFT calculations will be also briefly discussed to offer a historic overview of how the computations promote the understanding of the microscopic mechanisms and kinetics of nanozymes.