Mainland chemist honored for Nobel Prize level research

Chinese chemist Zhang Tao, a pioneer in single-atom catalysis, has become the first Citation Laureate from the Chinese mainland for research that enables more efficient, sustainable chemical reactions and offers solutions for a cleaner, greener world.

Selected by analytics company Clarivate, the international award recognizes research influence and citation impact comparable to that of Nobel Prize recipients. Since the program's inception in 2002, 83 of more than 460 laureates have later been awarded a Nobel Prize.

Clarivate announced this year's 22 laureates in physiology or medicine, physics, chemistry and economics during a launch ceremony in Beijing on Thursday. The winners are affiliated with academic institutions and universities in eight countries.

Zhang, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a researcher at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, is renowned for the transformative technology of single-atom catalysis, which contributes to the sustainability of chemical processes, energy conversion and environmental cleanup.

In 2011, Zhang and his team published a landmark paper in the journal Nature Chemistry reporting the creation of a single-atom catalyst on an iron oxide support.

The findings revolutionized heterogeneous catalysis by overturning the conventional wisdom that a single atom would be unstable under catalytic conditions. The work also established a systematic methodology for other researchers.

The paper has since been cited more than 6,000 times in the Web of Science database.

"It ranks in the top 2,000 we have indexed in any field since 1970, and the top 500 for contributions from 2011 to the present," said David Pendlebury, chief scientist at Clarivate's Institute for Scientific Information.

"The paper, as they say, launched a thousand ships steered by other researchers now eager to explore the new territory that Zhang and his colleagues charted," he said.

Zhang said the award represents full recognition of the originality and international impact of the research.

"In the past, my collaborators and I created the concept of single-atom catalysis by standing on the shoulders of others. Looking ahead, I hope that more young scientists will stand on our shoulders to drive catalysis and chemistry to a higher level," he said.

"I believe that the integration of single-atom catalysis with artificial intelligence will shape a new paradigm of atomically precise catalysis, making catalyst rational design possible and accelerating the advancement of global new energy and green chemical industries," he added.

Osher Gilinsky, vice-president of Clarivate, said Zhang's selection as the first Citation Laureate from the Chinese mainland reflects the country's growing influence in global science.

"Over the past decade, we have witnessed the tremendous progress China has made and continues to make in research and development," he said.

He noted that according to the company's annual reports evaluating the research and innovation prowess of G20 nations, the Chinese mainland led research output with nearly 900,000 papers — tripling its volume since 2015.

"By honoring scientists like Zhang Tao, we help shine a light on discoveries that improve life and shape our future," he said.