Hunting for the hidden chemistry in heterogeneous catalysts

Bert M. Weckhuysen has a dream. Someday he’d like to produce a movie showing what happens on a catalytic solid at a submolecular level.

That dream remains out of reach, he admits. But after more than 20 years of work on the analytical techniques required to make a movie of a solid catalyst in action, Weckhuysen, a chemistry professor at Utrecht University, thinks its . . .