Volume 3 Issue 10, October 2020

The electro- and photo-catalytic reduction of carbon dioxide are important processes in the context of developing a sustainable carbon-neutral economy. In this Review Article, the authors discuss how the local chemical environment in the proximity of the catalytic active site can influence the reactivity and selectivity of the processes and detail different approaches to achieve their modulation.

Carbonyl–olefin metathesis reactions are a valuable tool in synthetic chemistry, but there are still some limitations in scope. Now, a catalyst system allows the activation of previously unreactive substrates for such a reaction by aluminium(iii)–ion pairs acting as Lewis acidic superelectrophiles.

CO is a key intermediate in the electro-oxidation of energy carrying fuels which typically acts as a poison. Here, the authors demonstrate that Cu is an efficient CO electro-oxidation catalyst in alkaline electrolyte due to the continuous formation of undercoordinated active Cu adatom sites in the presence of CO and OH.

The electrochemical reduction of CO₂ to value-added fuels and feedstocks has recently received a great deal of attention. Here, Cu nanowires that display rich surface steps are reported to sustain C₂H₄ production from CO₂ with a remarkably high Faradaic efficiency for 200 hours.

CRISPR–Cas9 systems have revolutionized the field of genome editing. This work reports rare structures of a Cas9 enzyme (St1Cas9) in its HNH catalytic state, providing mechanistic insights related to DNA recognition and cleavage, and structure-guided engineering is used for expansion of the PAM recognition.

Single-atom catalysts hold great promise for process optimization by reducing metal utilization. However, their structure–activity properties remain elusive. Here, a combination of operando techniques and density functional theory analysis is used to capture the evolution of single platinum atoms on CeO₂ during CO, C₃H₆ and CH₄ oxidation.

Visualizing catalytic processes at the nanoscale is crucial to establish structure–activity relations, but remains very challenging. Here, hydrogen spillover is revealed with a 10 nm spatial resolution during hydrogenation of chloronitrobenzenethiol on a bimetallic Pd/Au catalyst by means of tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy.

Hydroformylation of alkenes is widely used in industry to synthesize aldehydes, but is less prominent in small laboratories due to safety and equipment issues associated with the CO/H₂ mixture. This is now addressed by generating stoichiometric syngas from two main element compounds, with water as the activator.

The development of chiral catalysts is of fundamental importance in asymmetric catalysis. Now, chiral paddle-wheel diruthenium complexes are reported that are stable under oxidizing conditions and effective in asymmetric C–C and C–N bond-forming reactions with turnover numbers of up to 1,880,000.