In breakthrough, cheap aluminium may replace costly catalysts in pharma

For more than a century, aluminium has been chemistry’s workhorse — useful, abundant, cheap, albeit limited in its abilities as a catalyst. New work reported in Nature may change that.

Transition metals such as palladium, rhodium, and platinum underpin some of the most important industrial chemical processes in the world. But they are rare and expensive. India’s pharmaceutical and agrochemical industries also depend on them.

The new study, by researchers at the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, has suggested that aluminium, which is abundantly available in India, can be made to behave in the same way that makes those metals catalytically powerful, opening a potential path to cheaper alternatives.