Oxygen tolerance of an in silico-designed bioinspired hydrogen-evolving catalyst in water

Computational Approach to Molecular Catalysis by 3d Transition Metals: Challenges and Opportunities

Computational chemistry provides a versatile toolbox for studying mechanistic details of catalytic reactions and holds promise to deliver practical strategies to enable the rational in silico catalyst design. The versatile reactivity and nontrivial electronic structure effects, common for systems based on 3d transition metals, introduce additional complexity that may represent a particular challenge to the standard computational strategies. In this review, we discuss the challenges and capabilities of modern electronic structure methods for studying the reaction mechanisms promoted by 3d transition metal molecular catalysts. Particular focus will be placed on the ways of addressing the multiconfigurational problem in electronic structure calculations and the role of expert bias in the practical utilization of the available methods. The development of density functionals designed to address transition metals is also discussed. Special emphasis is placed on the methods that account for solvation effects and the multicomponent nature of practical catalytic systems. This is followed by an overview of recent computational studies addressing the mechanistic complexity of catalytic processes by molecular catalysts based on 3d metals. Cases that involve noninnocent ligands, multicomponent reaction systems, metal-ligand and metal-metal cooperativity, as well as modeling complex catalytic systems such as metal-organic frameworks are presented. Conventionally, computational studies on catalytic mechanisms are heavily dependent on the chemical intuition and expert input of the researcher. Recent developments in advanced automated methods for reaction path analysis hold promise for eliminating such human-bias from computational catalysis studies. A brief overview of these approaches is presented in the final section of the review. The paper is closed with general concluding remarks.

Isotopes and analogs of hydrogen--from fundamental investigations to practical applications

Hydrogen has a central role in the story of the universe itself and also in the story of our efforts to understand it. This paper retells the story of the part played by hydrogen and its stable isotope deuterium in the primordial synthesis of the elements, then goes on to describe how the spectrum of atomic hydrogen led to insights into the laws governing matter at the most fundamental level, from the quantum mechanics of Schrödinger and Heisenberg, through quantum electrodynamics, to the most recent work investigating the underlying structure of the proton itself. Atomic hydrogen is unique among the elements in that the concept of isotopy--atoms having the same nuclear charge but different masses--is stretched to its limit in the isotopes of hydrogen, ranging from the well-known isotopes deuterium and tritium to exotic species such as muonium, muonic helium, and positronium. These atoms, or atom-like objects, have much to tell us about fundamental aspects of the universe. In recent years the idea of utilizing hydrogen either as an energy source (through nuclear fusion) or as an energy storage medium (bound in hydrides or other materials) has attracted much attention as a possible avenue to a post-oil energy future. Some of the more interesting recent developments are described here. Dedicated to the memory of Brian C. Webster (1939-2008).