(Phys.org)—Practice is when everything works but nobody knows why. This light-hearted saying can equally be applied to chemical processes. "The process of so-called heterogeneous asymmetric catalysis is very easy to use in itself and works extremely well," says Alfons Baiker, an emeritus professor of reaction engineering and catalysis. "Understanding how it works, however, poses a major challenge for research." In a paper just published in the journal Angewandte Chemie, Baiker and his team describe a mechanism that is responsible for converting a non-chiral substrate with over 90% yield into the desired of two possible chiral products, a precursor of vitamin B5.
