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Reversible catalysis

Nature Reviews Chemistry volume 5, pages 348–360 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

We describe as ‘reversible’ a bidirectional catalyst that allows a reaction to proceed at a significant rate in response to even a small departure from equilibrium, resulting in fast and energy-efficient chemical transformation. Examining the relation between reaction rate and thermodynamic driving force is the basis of electrochemical investigations of redox reactions, which can be catalysed by metallic surfaces and biological or synthetic molecular catalysts. This relation has also been discussed in the context of biological energy transduction, regarding the function of biological molecular machines that harness chemical reactions to do mechanical work. This Perspective describes mean-field kinetic modelling of these three types of systems — surface catalysts, molecular catalysts of redox reactions and molecular machines — with the goal of unifying concepts in these different fields. We emphasize that reversibility should be distinguished from other figures of merit, such as rate or directionality, before its design principles can be identified and used to engineer synthetic catalysts.

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Fig. 1: Differences between ordered and branched catalytic mechanisms.
Fig. 2: Reversibility in catalysis.
Fig. 3: Rate versus driving force responses of different catalysts.
Fig. 4: The power output of motors and fuel cells.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Wendy J. Shaw, Eric S. Wiedner, Hideshi Ooka and Patrick Bertrand for fruitful discussions. They acknowledge financial support from CNRS, Aix-Marseille Université, Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-15-CE05-0020) and the Excellence Initiative of Aix-Marseille University - A*MIDEX, a French ‘Investissements d’Avenir’ programme (ANR-11-IDEX-0001-02), the ERC starting grant 715900 and the ANR-DFG project SHIELDS (PL 746/2-1). The Marseille group is part of FrenchBIC (www.frenchbic.cnrs.fr).

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  1. Laboratoire de Bioénergétique et Ingénierie des Protéines, CNRS, Aix-Marseille Université, Institut de Microbiologie de la Méditerranée, and Institut Microbiologie, Bioénergies et Biotechnologie, Marseille, France

    Vincent Fourmond & Christophe Léger

  2. Campus Straubing for Biotechnology and Sustainability, Technical University of Munich, Straubing, Germany

    Nicolas Plumeré

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Fourmond, V., Plumeré, N. & Léger, C. Reversible catalysis. Nat Rev Chem 5, 348–360 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41570-021-00268-3

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