Reviews & Analysis

Intensified interest in the area of nickel catalysis has driven the quest for an air-stable and modular Ni(0) precatalyst. Now, an air-stable Ni(0)-olefin precatalyst allows for the convenient set-up of nickel-catalysed reactions on the benchtop.

Simple methods to incorporate deuterium into organic compounds are highly sought after as deuteration can enable mechanistic studies or improve the metabolic stability of pharmaceuticals. Now, a catalytic hydrogen–deuterium exchange reaction using deuterated water allows convenient access to deuterated aldehyde building blocks.

Because of the high strength of N≡N bonds, N₂ is often employed as an inert gas. Now it has been shown that it can partly react to yield surface nitrogen species that facilitate C–O hydrogenolysis reactions on supported Ru catalysts.

Carbon monoxide can be electrochemically transformed to multi-carbon products selectively at high rates, raising the prospect of a two-step pathway to transform CO₂ into value-added chemical products. This Perspective highlights recent progress complemented by a techno-economic analysis of the two-step conversion process and cradle-to-gate lifecycle assessment.

Bioelectrocatalysis provides access to sustainable and highly efficient technological applications, but several limitations still prevent the large-scale integration of such devices. This Review discusses the current status of hydrogenase-based biofuel cells and biophotoelectrodes for solar energy harvesting.

Enzymes require many, often hundreds, of amino acid residues arranged in a protein fold to promote catalysis. Now, self-assembly of a single amino acid — phenylalanine — in the presence of zinc is shown to form supramolecular structures that promote hydrolysis better than natural enzymes on a weight basis.

Bio-inspired by cellular respiration, the richness of oxygen redox chemistry is a cutting-edge field for building lithium batteries. While the Li–air battery uses external oxygen, a new lithium battery offers a high energy-density and long-term cycling stability just by confining oxygen and lithium between graphene oxides.

Methods to control the performance of heterogeneous catalysts are extremely relevant to the success of industrial processes. This review provides a rationalization of the effects that metal support interactions have on the reactivity of different catalytic systems, emphasizing strategies to tune such effects.

The energies of the species in a given reaction network are linked by linear scaling relationships, limiting the design of catalysts with improved activity and selectivity. In this Perspective, López and Pérez-Ramírez discuss strategies to circumvent such scaling relationships.

Imine reductases are promising catalysts, facilitating a direct stereoselective route to secondary amines. Now, protein engineering has created stable and efficient variants that allow their application in kilogram-scale synthesis.

Given the importance of enantioenriched β²- and β³-amino acids as building blocks, direct and versatile methods for their synthesis are highly coveted by organic chemists. Now, using easily accessible 1,3-oxazinane motifs, a regiodivergent and enantioselective C–H functionalization method permits their synthesis in a straightforward and practical fashion.

The design of heterogeneous catalysts with tunable activity and selectivity constitutes a remarkable challenge. Now, a synthetic approach towards producing nanocrystals encapsulated within polymer layers has been developed, unravelling the principles to achieve control of transition state and product diffusion using CO oxidation as a case study.

Transition metal-catalysed bioorthogonal reactions are severely hindered in biomedical applications, mainly due to a lack of target specificity. Now, research shows that a trojan exosome vesicle can deliver a palladium catalyst specifically to progenitor cells for bioorthogonal catalysis, allowing localized prodrug activation.

While the oxidative addition of Pd to carbon–halide bonds is often regarded as being essentially irreversible, this is sometimes not the case. This Perspective looks at the conditions leading to reductive elimination of Pd from carbon–halide bonds, and the synthetic opportunities that this offers are discussed.

Fusion systems have been designed that link enzymes to cofactors and immobilization modules through appropriate synthetic spacers. These modular biocatalysts (assembling catalysis, cofactor provision/regeneration and assisted immobilization) are suited to heterogeneous biocatalysis systems and can be efficiently used in continuous flow reactors.

Conventional experiments for generating proteins with improved properties by directed evolution are iterative, lengthy and costly. Now, a label-free assay has been developed for ultrahigh-throughput microfluidic screening that can dramatically accelerate the discovery of superior biocatalysts from a single round of genetic randomization.

A strategy using pressure was devised to structurally identify conformational transitions in protein ensembles, allowing the rational prediction of mutations that induce pressure-driven enzyme activation. These results highlight the power of flexibility–function analyses in protein engineering design and applications.

CO oxidation is an important reaction in automotive catalysis which has been extensively studied since the 1970s. In this Review, Higashi and Beniya examine the development of state-of-the-art catalysts, in particular focusing on CO oxidation pathways for single-atom and few-atom cluster catalysis.

Proton exchange membrane fuel cells can efficiently provide clean power for electric vehicles, although more efficient and economic cathode catalysts are still required. This Review highlights recent breakthroughs, challenges and future research directions for Pt group metal (PGM) and PGM-free oxygen reduction catalysts.

Solid oxide fuel cells have been identified as a promising technology to decarbonize the transportation sector. This perspective describes recent advances in the area and identifies those crucial aspects that still require development in order to favour the practical application of this technology.