Smart catalytic sites meet future industry: What’s next?

Based on the understanding of traditional catalysts, the dynamic evolution of the catalytic process has been deeply reviewed, leading to a new perspective of “smart catalytic site”. It is worth noting that the similarity between the dynamic change of catalytic sites and the natural evolution law was revealed. The “smartly catalytic coupling system”, owing to the environmental intelligence-response feature, was innovatively proposed. Meanwhile, this paper points out that the absolute intelligent catalysis is absent; however, constructing an intelligent catalytic system may require the surface catalytic sites supported on a self-optimizing substrate, variable reaction conditions, and an AI-assisted advanced reaction platform. This dynamic smart catalytic system is expected to automatically and rapidly adjust to certain human demands, precisely and efficiently meeting the future development trends. Besides, completely understanding the inter-crossed relationship among the micro-catalytic site evolution process, natural species macro-adaptability, and the dialectic involving the dynamic unity of opposites principle, is significant for scientific researchers’ worldview development.