Catalyst Binding Site Considerations

The prospect of advancing chemical sensor technology, modelling electron-transfer processes in biological systems and producing new redox catalysts has led to considerable interest in the design and syntheses of redox-active macrocyclic receptor molecules that contain a redox centre in close proximity to a host binding site. ... 

In the last few years there has been considerable interest in development of new aza and oxa-aza macrocyclic receptors. Macrocyclic molecules containing appropriate binding sites and cavities of suitable size and shape may be designed to form selective inclusion complexes. Actually, the molecular topology of the host molecule can be synthetically modulated in order to bind many different chemical species. To this purpose, aza or oxa-aza macrocyclic receptors able to bind different kinds of substrates, such as inorganic or organic cations,anionic species, " and neutral molecules have been studied to elaborate their use as selective recognizers, molecular carriers and catalysts. 

Considerable progress has been made in model catalysts of planar well-ordered extended surfaces, but under UHV conditions. Atomic structure and electronic properties of many metal surfaces or metal oxide-supported materials are now accessible, related to the physical and chemical properties of adsorbate species on surfaces, in particular binding sites. However, there are several problems related to the application of models with real catalysts, such as metal-support interactions and... 

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