All systems go

摘要

High energy prices and environmental worries are accelerating the hunt for good catalysts. Luckily, industrial chemists have found an unexpected tool to aid their search for better materials to speed up chemical reactions. The latest addition to their repertoire comes from the drug industry and is known as combinatorial chemistry. The technique allows chemists to automatically synthesize and screen large numbers of compounds at once, helping to track down the ones that will prove useful. It has caught on fast in the petrochemical business, and industries making everything from cosmetics to food look set to exploit it too.