The Importance of Catalyst Wettability

The contribution of catalyst wettability for catalytic performance has been ignored for a long time. In this Concept, we have briefly summarized recent works on the importance of catalyst wettability for improving catalytic activity, product selectivity, and catalyst stability. Suitable catalyst wettability is favourable for several reasons: 1) to enrich the reactants, leading to enhancement of the catalytic activity; 2) to inhibit sidereactions, giving desirable products; 3) to reduce the poisoning of active sites and damage to catalyst framework, resulting in an increase of catalyst stability. These advantages of suitable catalyst wettability will be very important for designing and developing novel heterogeneous catalysts in the future.