Catalysis articles within Nature Chemistry

Featured

  • Research Highlights |

    A rationally designed highly electrophilic iridium complex excels at catalysing the formation of five-membered carbocycles.

    • Stephen Davey

  • Research Highlights |

    Strontium-doped lanthanum perovskite oxides can help to remove harmful NOx pollution from diesel exhaust.

    • Neil Withers

  • Article |

    Identifying the best catalyst for a particular reaction traditionally involves testing a wide variety of metal and ligand combinations in standard reactions. Here, the best catalyst is found by using mass spectrometry to identify the least stable — and thus most reactive — intermediate in a dynamic mixture of complexes.

    • Jeroen Wassenaar
    • , Eveline Jansen
    •  & Joost N. H. Reek

  • Research Highlights |

    An efficient heterogeneous catalyst for the conversion of glucose into fructose has been prepared by incorporating tin centres into the framework of a zeolite.

    • Anne Pichon

  • Research Highlights |

    A stable water-oxidation catalyst containing a cobalt oxide core has been made.

    • Neil Withers

  • Review Article |

    Rare-earth metal dialkyl complexes can be readily transformed into the corresponding cationic monoalkyl species — which have been shown to catalyse a range of (co)polymerization processes — as well as into polyhydride complexes that have unique structures and a rich reaction chemistry.

    • Masayoshi Nishiura
    •  & Zhaomin Hou

  • Article |

    Gold nanoparticles can catalyse oxidation reactions in remarkably mild conditions and have excited much interest in recent years. With experimental studies disagreeing over the size of the most active nanoparticles, density functional calculations have now shown that limiting the particle size to below two nanometres is crucial.

    • Olga Lopez-Acevedo
    • , Katarzyna A. Kacprzak
    •  & Hannu Häkkinen

  • Article |

    Chiral thiols and organosulfur compounds are important in many areas of chemistry but there are relatively few methods available for their efficient enantioselective synthesis. Here, a kinetic resolution of chiral thiols is reported along with a demonstration that a concomitant desymmetrization of the acylating agent is beneficial for the selectivity of both processes.

    • Aldo Peschiulli
    • , Barbara Procuranti
    •  & Stephen J. Connon

  • Research Highlights |

    Molecular dynamics simulations have revealed important mechanistic details about how carbamate is transported from one active site to another within in an enzyme.

    • Gavin Armstrong

  • Review Article |

    The field of organocatalysis has grown rapidly in the past decade to become, along with metal catalysis and biocatalysis, a third pillar of asymmetric catalysis. Here, progress in the use of organocatalytic cascade reactions for total synthesis is reviewed. The elegance and efficiency of such cascades mean that they have emerged as a powerful tool in synthetic organic chemistry.

    • Christoph Grondal
    • , Matthieu Jeanty
    •  & Dieter Enders

  • Research Highlights |

    A Brønsted acid co-catalyst is the key to the synthesis of furans by alkene cross-metathesis.

    • Laura Croft

  • News & Views |

    Yttrium-based catalysts can be used to stitch together two different lactone monomers in an alternating fashion to produce polyesters with well-defined primary structures. The ability to control the sequence of building blocks in polymers with increasing levels of precision offers new opportunities for tailoring the properties of designer synthetic macromolecules.

    • Jean-François Lutz

  • News & Views |

    An enzyme that is unusually tolerant of a truly broad range of substrates can catalyse aldol-type chemistry on sugars in which the various hydroxyl groups are protected. The new methodology combines some of the most important advantages of enzyme and small-molecule catalysis.

    • Benjamin G. Davis

  • Article |

    The selective construction of multiple adjacent stereocentres is an important challenge for synthetic organic methodology, and only a handful of catalytic methods exist that can forge adjacent quaternary and tertiary stereocentres. Here, a palladium-catalysed multiple-bond-forming cascade leads to the construction of such systems in high yield, diastereomeric ratio and enantiomeric excess.

    • Jan Streuff
    • , David E. White
    •  & Brian M. Stoltz

  • Research Highlights |

    An unusual pathway in the reaction of various transition metal atoms with methanol leads to the direct production of hydrogen.

    • Gavin Armstrong

  • Article |

    Highly diastereoselective Negishi cross-coupling reactions between 2-, 3- and 4-substituted cycloalkylzinc reagents and aryl iodides are described. In all cases, the thermodynamically most stable diastereomers of the cross-coupling products were obtained. NMR spectroscopy and density functional theory calculations were performed in order to rationalize the observed stereoselectivities.

    • Tobias Thaler
    • , Benjamin Haag
    •  & Paul Knochel

  • News & Views |

    Embedding platinum nanoparticles in a polymer matrix produces a system that reacts like a homogeneous catalyst, but provides the stability and separation advantages of a heterogeneous one.

    • Gadi Rothenberg

  • News & Views |

    Small-molecule enzyme-inhibitors often display insufficient affinity and selectivity for their targets causing unwanted side effects when used as drugs. Molecularly imprinted polymers prepared using the enzyme as a template could offer a solution.

    • Börje Sellergren

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