3. Benefits, conclusions and outlook

While the Diatom frustule remains the archetypal "perfect catalyst" in terms of its construction and operation, societal use of conventional catalysts today is quite divergent. Divergent because nature has taken its time and, in this space-time, the low kinetics inherent in Fick diffusion are not a constraint... quite the contrary! Indeed, nature is capable of setting up reactions in open systems governed not by "thermodynamics" but by "kinetics", as in the oscillating reactions that lead, in some cases, to the famous Turing textures.

Returning to the subject of interest "contact catalysis", in our industrial societies if we "catalyze", it's undoubtedly to save time (and/or money) and reach the natural thermodynamic equilibrium (ζ _eq ) of a balanced reaction more quickly. At the moment, however, we are essentially using...