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Metal oxide alloys are important industrial catalysts, but their structure–activity relationships are poorly understood. Now, a study encompassing a combination of computational tools and machine learning approaches sheds light on the activity and selectivity of zinc–chromium oxides during syngas conversion.

The roughness factor of an electrode has been generally used to increase total rates of production, though rarely as a means to improve selectivity. Now, Jaramillo, Hahn and co-workers direct the selectivity of CO reduction to multicarbon oxygenates at low overpotentials by increasing the roughness factor of nanostructured Cu electrodes.

The active sites of metal-free carbon catalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction remain still elusive. Now, Yao, Dai and co-workers combine work-function analyses with macro/micro-electrochemical measurements on highly oriented pyrolytic graphite and conclude that pentagon defects are the main active sites for acidic oxygen reduction.

Tailoring platinum-based catalysts is of great research interest in the fields of electrochemical energy conversion and storage, as well as other applications. Now, an approach has been developed to boost the activity of platinum catalysts at the atomic scale.

Primary alcohols are known for their broad application in life sciences and the chemical industry. Now, Beller and colleagues present a regioselective, iron-catalysed hydrogenation of aliphatic and aromatic epoxides as a general route to primary alcohols under mild conditions

Hydrogenases are very powerful biocatalysts for dihydrogen cleavage. Now, X-ray crystallography shows how [Fe]-hydrogenase requires ligand exchanges at the metal centre and significant molecular motions to open and close its active site to effectively transfer a hydride to an electrophilic organic substrate.

In between the twin certainties of reject and accept lies a large range of decisions covered by the blanket term of Revise. Here we discuss how to deal with this uncertain result.

The biological functions of glycan motifs such as the Lewis blood antigens are often defined by their precise multivalent presentation on complex glycoconjugates, making synthesis particularly challenging. Access to a number of positionally defined Lewis motifs on natural polysaccharide scaffolds has now been achieved using bacterial glycosyltransferases.

Radical intermediates are key species in many chemical transformations. Recent advances have provided a new suite of selective radical alkylation reactions. This Comment highlights pioneering studies using alkyl amines that act as radical precursors in a number of catalytic processes by their conversion to alkylpyridinium salts.

A synthetic DNA enzyme catalyses the formation of a native phosphodiester bond between two RNA fragments, but the molecular details of the mechanism remained elusive. Research using computational and biochemical approaches now suggests that the DNA enzyme recruits two magnesium ions to assist in the catalysis of RNA ligation.

The reduction of alkynes to alkenes is complicated by the potential for over-reduction to the alkane. Here, for the iridium-catalysed semi-hydrogenation of alkynes, the endpoint of the reaction is clearly identified by a colour change of the metal complex.

Detailed knowledge about its catalytic process is important for exploiting [Fe]-hydrogenase—an enzyme that cleaves and produces H₂—for technological purposes. This study presents an atomic-resolution crystal structure of a substrate-bound closed active form of the enzyme and a precise catalytic cycle.

DNAzymes are attractive catalysts for biomedical and biotechnological applications, but their catalytic mechanism remained obscure. This work investigates the detailed reaction mechanism of RNA ligation catalysed by the 9DB1 DNAzyme, revealing that it resembles those of natural protein enzymes.

Axially chiral compounds have proven to be privileged catalysts/ligands for asymmetric catalysis, with BINOL, SPNIOL and their derivatives being particularly successful. Here the authors report a family of axially chiral alkenes, and demonstrate their use in asymmetric catalysis.

The Fischer–Tropsch reaction is one of the key means of producing synthetic fuels. Here a deposition method to disperse cobalt nanoparticles across an alpha alumina support is shown to produce a highly stable system capable of withstanding demanding conditions while providing excellent activity.

Improving the performance of commercial three-way catalysts like rhodium on alumina is a major challenge considering the limited design space allowed for such systems. Now, solution atomic layer deposition is used to incorporate titania or zirconia promoters into this catalyst, leading to remarkable improvements in its overall performance.

Platinum plays a crucial role in various electrocatalytic systems, but its scarcity and cost limit its practical application. Now, a single-atom tailoring strategy applied to platinum nanowires maximizes their specific and mass activities for the hydrogen evolution and methanol and ethanol oxidation reactions.