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Encapsulation is an effective strategy to tune metal-catalysed reactions, although its potential has not been fully explored. Here, design principles and advanced understanding of the reactivity of different polymer-encapsulated Pd nanocrystals are provided using CO oxidation as a benchmark reaction.
The development of efficient and low-cost electrocatalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction is critical for improving the efficiency of water electrolysis. Here, the inactive spinel CoAl2O4 is activated via iron substitution to achieve high activity and stability for water oxidation.
The direct amination of alcohols with ammonia is a modern and clean route for the synthesis of amines. This joint theoretical and experimental study reveals the key factors governing the activity and selectivity to primary amines on metals, which are then used for the rational design of bimetallic catalysts.
Efforts to harness the cellulolytic activity of enzyme assemblies have been mainly empirical due to the lack of quantification tools. Now this work reports experimental and theoretical approaches to quantify enzyme assemblies, revealing the parameters that are important for cellulolytic activity.
The production of high-value fuels from bio-derived methanol requires improvement to become economically viable. Here, process advancements for the production of high-octane gasoline are reported, and the effects that these have on making the process competitive with market rates of fossil fuels are analysed.
The synthesis of stereodefined alkenes is challenging, and often relies on the steric bias of the substituents. Here the authors report a photoredox/nickel catalysed difunctionalization of alkynes, giving access to either E- or Z-tri-substituted alkenes, depending on the photocatalyst used.
Biocompatibility plays a crucial role for the development of artificial metalloenzymes (ArMs) for therapeutic applications. This work presents an ArM with a ruthenium catalyst that is protected from physiological glutathione and accumulates in cancer cell lines for metathesis-mediated prodrug activation.
The synthesis of ethanol via CO2 hydrogenation is a challenging process, often hampered by low selectivity. This work reports a Zr12 cluster-based metal–organic framework as support for cooperative Cu(i) sites that catalyse CO2 hydrogenation to ethanol with remarkable selectivity upon promotion with caesium. Credit: Cloud background, CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
The fleeting nature of transition state ensembles of protein motions has precluded their experimental observation. This work provides an atomistic insight into the rate-determining structural transition of adenylate kinase during catalysis by high-pressure NMR and molecular dynamics simulations.
Combining enzymatic and heterogeneous catalysts is challenging due to different reaction requirements. Here, a method is presented constructing single protein–polymer nanoconjugates as nanoreactors for the in situ synthesis of enzyme–metal nanohybrids with high activity at ambient conditions.
Regenerating expensive S-adenosylmethionine (SAM) in enzymatic in vitro reactions is challenging—but important for the commercial scope of SAM-dependent enzymes. This work reports a simple two-enzyme cascade for the in vitro regeneration of SAM for the enzymatic methylation of diverse substrates.
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.
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
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.