Scientists Make A Form Of Aluminum That Can Act As A Catalyst

Popular Mechanics reports on a new form of aluminum that could replace platinum and palladium as a catalyst:

In a new paper published in the journal Nature Communications, a team of scientists from King’s College London and Trinity College Dublin describe a new kind of aluminum called “cyclotrialumane,” which features a three-aluminum-atom compound arranged in a trimeric (a.k.a. triangular) structure. With its strong reactivity and ability to hold up when dissolved in different solutions, this new aluminum could be a cheaper and more environmentally friendly alternative to typical catalysts, which usually hail from the platinum group metals (PGMs, a special subset of transition metals) of the periodic table.