Developing green heterogeneous catalysts with excellent Fenton-like activity is critical for water remediation technologies. However, current catalysts often rely on toxic transitional metals, and their catalytic performance is far from satisfactory as alternatives of homogeneous Fenton-like catalysts. In this study, a green catalyst based on Zn single-atom was prepared in an ammonium atmosphere using ZIF−8 as a precursor. Multiple characterization analyses provided evidence that abundant intrinsic defects due to the edge sites were created, leading to the formation of a thermally stable edge-hosted Zn−N ₄ single-atom catalyst (ZnN ₄ −Edge). Density functional theory calculations revealed that the edge sites equipped the single-atom Zn with a super catalytic performance, which not only promoted decomposition of peroxide molecule (HSO ₅ ⁻ ) but also greatly lowered the activation barrier for ^• OH generation. Consequently, the as-prepared ZnN ₄ −Edge exhibited extremely high Fenton-like performance in oxidation and mineralization of phenol as a representative organic contaminant in a wide range of pH, realizing its quick detoxification. The atom-utilization efficiency of the ZnN ₄ −Edge was ~10 ⁴ higher than an equivalent amount of the control sample without edge sites (ZnN ₄ ), and the turnover frequency was ~10 ³ times of the typical benchmark of homogeneous catalyst (Co ²⁺ ). This study opens up a revolutionary way to rationally design and optimize heterogeneous catalysts to homogeneous catalytic performance for Fenton-like application.

Nanoparticulate Ti was biodiluted while nanoparticulate Ag was biomagnified in the fish food web in Taihu Lake, China.