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ZEOLITE CATALYSTS

Active sites in the right places

Nature Synthesis volume 1, pages 757–758 (2022)Cite this article

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Bifunctional catalysts containing metal and acid sites are used industrially in alkane hydroconversion. Now, the nanoscale spatial separation of the two active sites is shown to promote hydroisomerization and inspires design principles for this type of catalyst.

Growing attention in the chemical industry has focused on multistep reactions promoted by multifunctional catalysts, which possess more than one type of active site1. In this way, the need for additional costly synthesis and purification steps can be avoided. For example, zeolite-confining noble metals bearing both acidic and metal catalytic sites have been used as bifunctional catalysts to promote a number of important industrial petrochemical processes2. In particular, zeolite-confined Pt is a promising catalyst combining a catalytically versatile noble metal and the confinement effects of a zeolite framework. A notable example is the use of Pt and acidic zeolites as bifunctional catalysts for hydroconversion reactions3. Also, the strategy involving coupling of different catalytic activities in a single catalyst has been used to promote tandem chemical reactions4.

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Fig. 1: The impact of metal–acid catalytic site intimacy on the selectivity of C7 isomers in the hydroisomerization of n-heptane.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing & Shenzhen Research Institute & Joint Laboratory for Marine Advanced Materials in National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology (Qingdao), Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, China

    Si-Ming Wu & Xiao-Yu Yang

  2. Department of Physical and Macromolecular Chemistry, Faculty of Sciences, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic

    Jiří Čejka

  3. School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Xiao-Yu Yang

Authors
  1. Si-Ming Wu
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  2. Jiří Čejka
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  3. Xiao-Yu Yang
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Correspondence to Xiao-Yu Yang.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Wu, SM., Čejka, J. & Yang, XY. Active sites in the right places. Nat. Synth 1, 757–758 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44160-022-00168-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44160-022-00168-4

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