Effects of Ligands, Cluster Size, and Charge State in Gas-Phase Catalysis: A Happy Marriage of Experimental and Computational Studies

We present selected examples of gas-phase reactions which are of timely interest for the activation of small molecules. Due to the very nature of the experiments, detailed insight in the active site of catalysts is provided and-in combination with computational chemistry-mechanistic aspects of as well as the elementary steps involved in the making and breaking of chemical bonds are revealed.