Combinatorial catalyst discovery

There have been recent attempts to use the principles of combinatorial chemistry and high-throughput screening strategies for catalyst identification. With the technology available that allows the synthesis of large libraries, scientists of varied backgrounds have implemented screening efforts to identify active and selective catalysts. Within this context, several techniques have come to light in the past year: infrared thermography is used to identify optimal catalysts by monitoring the change in temperature for exothermic reactions; fluorescence and colored-dye assays, a familiar tool to biologists, is being applied to the identification of catalysts that exhibit the highest activity. Whereas none of these screening methods provide a general solution to the problem of screening large combinatorial libraries (there is likely to be no general solution), each advance represents an important intellectual and technological step forward.