Surface organometallic chemistry: A sustainable approach in modern catalysis

Surface organometallic chemistry (SOMC) is an established concept, associated with specific tools for the characterization of a well-defined single-site catalysts. Primarily, chemical industry preferred heteroge-neous catalyst over homogeneous catalyst for various reasons. But the difficulty in development of a well-defined heterogeneous catalyst stalled by the presence of various kinds of active sites as well as their low concentration on surfaces. To develop a well-defined heterogeneous catalyst which can pos-sess hundred percent active sites like that of homogeneous catalyst a new branch was developed called surface organometallic catalyst (SOMCcat). This is a well-proven concept where a homogeneous catalyst could graft on an oxide support to form SOMCcat. These surface species can be well-characterized by modern NMR techniques apart from EXAFS, IR, and gas quantification methods. In this review the appli-cation of SOMC strategy for the design and preparation of catalyst for industrial relevant processes are discussed. (c) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

Surface organometallic chemistry (SOMC) is an established concept used for characterizing well-defined single-site catalysts. Surface organometallic catalyst (SOMCcat) was developed to overcome the limitations of heterogeneous catalysts. By grafting homogeneous catalysts onto oxide supports, SOMCcat with fully active sites can be achieved.