Recently, the DICP Prof. Tao Zhang’s group, the President of iChEM Council and director of iChEM platform, cooperated with Prof. Jingyue Liu of Arizona State University . made rapid progress in the field of single-atom catalysis research.

They reported FeOx-supported platinum single-atom and pseudo-single-atom structures as highly active, chemoselective and reusable catalysts for hydrogenation of a variety of substituted nitroarenes. For hydrogenation of ​3-nitrostyrene, the catalyst yields a TOF of ~1,500 h−1, 20-fold higher than the best result reported in literature, and a selectivity to ​3-aminostyrene close to 99%, the best ever achieved over platinum group metals. The superior performance can be attributed to the presence of positively charged platinum centers and the absence of Pt–Pt metallic bonding, both of which favor the preferential adsorption of nitro groups. This work was published on “Nature Communication” (Nature Communications, 5, 5634, 2014)

Functionalized anilines are industrially important and valuable intermediates for a variety of agrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, dyes and pigments. Nevertheless, when one or more reducible groups (for example, C=C, C≡C, C=O, C≡N and so on) are present in a nitroarene molecule, the chemoselective hydrogenation of the nitro group has been a grand challenge. In this context, there is a great need to search for an environmentally benign and highly efficient method to produce functionalized anilines.

Single-Atom Catalysis is a new concept in heterocatalysis field, the distribution of homogenous active site not only make full use of metal atom, but also build a bridge across Heterocatalsis and homogeneous catalysis. Zhang’s group presented the single-atom catalysis concept and synthesized Pt/FeOx single-atom catalyst for the first time, based on the cooperation with Prof. Liu and Prof. Juan Li. In the recent three years, the single-atom catalysis develops so fast that many research groups have started this work. Prof. Zhang’s group is one of them and consecutively making progress as the follows: synthesis Ir1/FeOx single-atom catalyst for water gas shift reaction（J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2013, 135, 15314); invited to write a review article on Acc. Chem. Res. 2013, 46, 1740. This is a successful application of single atom catalyst in the field of fine chemical synthesis.

The research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, iChEM and Chinese Academic of Sciences.