Polymer-coated gold-platinum rods

chemists have created a polymer-coated version of gold-platinum nanorods, the first catalysts of their kind that can be used in the organic solvents preferred by industry.

The chemical and pharmaceutical industries spend vast amounts of money each year on catalysts that are needed to process drugs and other high-value chemicals.

‘There are some industrial reactions where drug makers have no choice but to use platinum and palladium catalysts, but the majority of these are homogenous, which means they mix readily with reactants and are very difficult to remove,’ said lead researcher Eugene Zubarev, associate professor in chemistry at Rice. ‘Because these heavy metals are toxic, they must be completely removed from the drug after its synthesis is completed.

‘However, the removal of homogeneous catalysts is very time consuming and expensive, which creates a big problem for pharmaceutical companies.’

Among catalysts, platinum and palladium are well known for reactions involving hydrogen because atoms of hydrogen typically join together in pairs. Platinum and palladium are suited to cleaving these pairs and leaving the individual hydrogen atoms available for reactions with other molecules.