Reviews & Analysis

Industrial propane dehydrogenation typically requires hazardous or costly catalysts based on Pt or Cr. Now, cobalt silicalite-1 zeolites emerge as potential substitutes in terms of stability on-stream and in regeneration, as well as intrinsic high activity.

It is difficult to isolate and control the reactivity of nickel(I) complexes, despite their potential interest for cross-coupling reactions. Now, Mirica and colleagues report thermally robust bimetallic Ni(I) catalysts supported by isocyanide ligands that show high catalytic efficacy and selectivity in cross-coupling reactions, addressing a long-standing gap in Ni(I) chemistry.

Metalloenzymes serve as staple biocatalysts for a broad range of reactions, offering exquisite selectivity and wide-ranging applicability when paired with versatile metals such as nickel. The mechanism behind sulfonamide formation catalysed by a recently discovered Ni-dependent enzyme has now been revealed, opening tractable avenues to biocatalyst-mediated expansion of the sulfonamide chemical space.

The 2025 Materials Research Society (MRS) Fall Meeting highlighted the latest developments at the frontiers of materials research. This report focuses on multimodal operando/in situ methods employed to probe dynamic evolution of catalysts under far-from-equilibrium operating conditions — a key challenge in advancing catalyst development.

This Perspective discusses ways to probe the presence or absence of molecular-scale interactions between actives sites on heterogeneous electrodes and how they affect the mechanism of (photo)electrocatalytic reactions.

Biological nitrogen fixation is vital for sustainable agriculture, yet nitrogenase engineering is hindered by limited insight into their essential metallocluster cofactor assembly and transfer. Here, by capturing the nitrogenase biosynthetic component NifEN in multiple structural states, a tunnel-and-switch mechanism that coordinates receipt, maturation and delivery of the FeMo-cofactor precursor is revealed.

Acidic water electrolysis rapidly degrades most Earth-abundant catalysts through water-driven dissolution. A study now demonstrates that weakening interfacial hydrogen bonding by introducing lanthanide elements to cobalt oxide can dramatically enhance its stability without compromising activity, enabling exceptional durability in proton exchange membrane water electrolysis without reliance on noble metals.

The advances in artificial intelligence are permeating most scientific domains, and heterogeneous catalysis is no exception. This Perspective discusses the current state and future prospects of AI in heterogeneous catalysis, from the development of an AI-ready data ecosystem to multimodal foundation models and autonomous labs.

Chiral carboxylic acids bearing two distinct heteroatoms at the α-carbon could tune the functions of biomolecules but have remained largely inaccessible. Now, a strategy is developed for the preparation of α,α-diheteroatomic carboxylic acids through enantioselective O–H or N–H insertion into a thia-Rh-carbene species.

New-to-nature photometabolisms are highly intriguing for manufacturing but difficult to achieve. Now, Escherichia coli engineering integrates flavin-based photobiocatalysis with natural enzymatic reactions, achieving efficient semi- and complete photobiosynthesis of diverse unnatural products, demonstrating scalable manufacturing in bioreactors.

A cobalt-doped RuO₂ catalyst enables proton-exchange-membrane (PEM) electrolysers to operate on inexpensive reverse-osmosis water for thousands of hours by blocking chloride and cation impurities. Dual interfacial shielding preserves membrane conductivity, suppresses chlorine evolution and minimizes metal dissolution. This strategy lowers capital and operating costs while maintaining high current densities, advancing practical low-purity-water hydrogen production.

Energy transfer photocatalysis typically requires expensive metal complexes or specific synthetic photosensitizers with particular triplet energies. Nitroarenes now emerge as powerful, sustainable alternatives, with their catalytic efficiency governed by excited-state geometry rather than only by energy matching, enabling efficient alkene isomerizations and cycloadditions.

Direct conversion of carboxylic acids to nitriles is desirable but thermodynamically uphill. Here, a bioinspired process utilizes magnesium and palladium co-catalysts and urea as a nitrogen source.

Electrocatalytic CO₂ reduction on Cu is typically studied at room temperature and pressure, producing mostly C₁ and C₂ products (short carbon chains). High-temperature experiments above 125 °C now reveal a carbon-chain growth mechanism akin to the thermally driven Fischer–Tropsch reaction, resulting in the production of C₁–C₅ hydrocarbons.

Deuterated compounds find applications in a variety of fields including catalysis optimization, mass spectrometry standards, pharmaceutical development and organic light emitting diodes. A recent study indicates that the choice of deuterium source significantly affects both the outcomes and mechanistic pathways in catalytic cycles.

Photocatalysis enables many appealing synthetic reactions to proceed under mild conditions. This Review focuses on structural and electronic changes of photocatalysts, potentially resulting in frequently neglected active species that facilitate catalysis.

Bioactive piperidines are among the most common motifs in pharmaceuticals, yet accessing their chiral, highly substituted forms remains challenging. Now, a copper-catalysed reaction of amino-acid-derived cyclopropanols with aldehydes unites catalyst design with the natural chirality of reagents to access a broad family of stereodefined cis-2,6-disubstituted piperidines, expanding opportunities in drug discovery and natural product synthesis.

The rational design of electrocatalysts for hydrogen-involving transformations requires a detailed understanding of surface metal-hydrogen intermediates at the single-site level. Now, single-molecule fluorescence microscopy enables the direct visualization of these intermediates and reveals inter- and intra-particle heterogeneity during the hydrogen evolution reaction on Pd nanocubes.

Engineering protein catalysts represents an attractive approach for enantioselective energy-transfer photochemistry. By combining a genetically encoded photosensitizer in the protein catalyst and a judiciously selected triplet quencher to suppress the racemic background reaction in the solution, photobiocatalytic [2+2] cycloaddition offers improved enantiocontrol in a triplet sensitization catalysis.

This Review covers the recent advances in the field of hydrogen atom transfer catalysis mediated by photoexcited transition metals without the use of external photosensitizers.