CATSYNEX · Harnessing the Market Potential of Single-Atom Catalysts through Next-Generation Large-Scale Synthesis

The CATSYNEX project, born from the ERC-StG SAC_2.0 project, addresses the pressing need for scalable production of single-atom catalysts to revolutionize industrial catalysis.While homogeneous catalysts dominate pharmaceutical synthesis due to their precision, they suffer from recovery, instability, and cost issues. Heterogeneous catalysts offer easier separation but struggle with lower degree of selectivity and activity when used in pharmaceutical reactions.Single-atom catalysts bridge this gap, offering atomically precise control during catalyst formulation, enhanced catalyst stability, higher turnover frequencies, and reduced material costs. However, current synthesis methods limit single-atom catalysts to laboratory scale. CATSYNEX aims to change this by developing scalable SAC production methods.The scientific validation involves optimizing SAC synthesis for uniform dispersion and high catalytic activity, ensuring reproducibility across batches and scaling to industrial quantities. Catalytic performance will be tested against traditional catalysts to showcase SAC superiority at different scales (from mg to kg), and over multiple catalytic cycles. Business validation includes analyzing IP landscape, regulatory framework, market appeal, and manufacturing economics.Through CATSYNEX, SACs are poised to become valuable tools for various chemical industries, driving innovation by making pharmaceutical synthesis more efficient, more sustainable, and cost-effective, and addressing some of the pressing critical challenges of the 21st-century manufacturing processes.