Chemists are making rapid progress in replacing catalysts that use precious metals, such as platinum and iridium, with catalytic molecules based on more abundant metals. Now, three groups have reported improved methods for adding hydrogen to particular parts of molecules — 'hydrogenation' reactions that are involved in making drugs, polymers and other industrial chemicals.

A team led by Paul Chirik at Princeton University in New Jersey studied catalysts that are based on simple cobalt salts wrapped by other widely available molecules. These are adept at hydrogenating a variety of carbon–carbon double bonds.

Robert Morris's group at the University of Toronto in Canada created iron-based catalysts that can hydrogenate carbon–oxygen or carbon–nitrogen double bonds. Such catalysts are more active than commercial platinum compounds and are just as selective in producing the desired version of a compound.

And Matthias Beller at the University of Rostock in Germany and his colleagues found that catalysts using solid iron-oxide nanoparticles do well at hydrogenating another chemical structure, the aryl nitro group — useful in agrochemicals and dyes, for instance.

Science 342, 1073–1076 ; 1076–1080; 1080–1083 (2013)