catalyst tagged posts

An enzyme was created via directed evolution to make silicon-carbon bonds 15X more efficiently than the best catalysts invented

A new study is the first to show that living organisms can be persuaded to make silicon-carbon bonds – something only chemists had done before. Scientists at Caltech “bred” a bacterial protein to make the humanmade bonds – a finding that has applications in several industries. Molecules with silicon-carbon, or organosilicon, compounds ar

gricultural chemicals, paints, semiconductors, and computer and TV screens. Currently, these products are made synthetically, since the Si-C bonds are not found in nature.

The new study demonstrates biology can be used to manufacture these bonds in ways that are more environmentally friendly and potentially much less expensive...

Gold compounds can surpass nickel and palladium-based catalysts in common reactions + often demonstrate novel types of reactivity compared to well-established catalysts. This allowed chemists to discover new chemical reactions and predetermined a fascinating boom in gold catalysis that we have observed in the recent years.

Professor Ananikov’s team introduced gold into well-known catalytic system which led to dramatic change of the reactivity and furnished the formation of novel gold-containing complexes. They appeared to be air stable and were isolated in the individual state. A single crystal Xray diffraction study ascertained the existence of a unique structural motif in the molecule, which cannot be explained within a conventional mechanistic framework.

The study used both theoretic...