Netherlands Institute for Catalysis Research

The NIOK Civil Report 2025 analyses the current state of civil society organisations in Hungary and provides the first comprehensive overview of the sector. Focusing on traditional civil society organisations - foundations and associations registered in Hungary - it examines the political, legal, and economic developments shaping the sector’s operating environment, as well as its key structural characteristics. The analysis draws on a wide range of data sources, including official statistics from the Hungarian Central Statistical Office (KSH), data from the Adjukössze.hu fundraising platform, a systematic review of relevant literature, and original surveys and interviews conducted by the NIOK Foundation. The report addresses three mainareas: macro-level conditions affecting civil society, statistical trends in organisational capacity, employment, and revenues, and funding opportunities, with particular attention to normative public funding, the 1% personal income tax scheme, and private donations. The findings indicate that civil society in Hungary operates in an increasingly constrained environment characterised by growing inequalities in access to resources. While overall revenues and employment have increased since 2010, these gains are highly concentrated, and volunteer participation has declined. At the same time, private donations and the 1% tax scheme remain vital for many organisations, highlighting both the resilience of the sector and its structural vulnerabilities.

Supramolecular approaches are increasingly used in the development of homogeneous catalysts and they also provide interesting new tools for the recycling of metal‐based catalysts. Various non‐covalent interactions have been utilized for the immobilization homogeneous catalysts on soluble and insoluble support. By non‐covalent anchoring the supported catalysts obtained can be recovered via (nano‐) filtration or such catalytic materials can be used in continuous flow reactors. Specific benefits from the reversibility of catalyst immobilization by non‐covalent interactions include the possibility to re‐functionalize the support material and the use as “boomerang” type catalyst systems in which the catalyst is captured after a homogeneous reaction. In addition, new reactor design with implemented recycling strategies becomes possible, such as a reverse‐flow adsorption reactor (RFA) that combines a homogeneous reactor with selective catalyst adsorption/desorpion. Next to these non‐covalent immobilization strategies, supramolecular chemistry can also be used to generate the support, for example by generation of self‐assembled gels with catalytic function. Although the stability is a challenging issue, some self‐assembled gel materials have been successfully utilized as reusable heterogeneous catalysts. In addition, catalytically active coordination cages, which are frequently used to achieve specific activity or selectivity, can be bound to support by ionic interactions or can be prepared in structured solid materials. These new heterogenized cage materials also have been used successfully as recyclable catalysts.

Hydrogenase enzymes are excellent proton reduction catalysts and therefore provide clear blueprints for the development of nature‐inspired synthetic analogues. Mimicking their catalytic center is straightforward but mimicking the protein matrix around the active site and all its functions remains challenging. Synthetic models lack this precisely controlled second coordination sphere that provides substrate preorganization and catalyst stability and, as a result, their performances are far from those of the natural enzyme. In this contribution, we report a strategy to easily introduce a specific yet customizable second coordination sphere around synthetic hydrogenase models by encapsulation inside M12L24 cages and, at the same time, create a proton‐rich nano‐environment by co‐encapsulation of ammonium salts, effectively providing substrate preorganization and intermediates stabilization. We show that catalyst encapsulation in these nanocages reduces the catalytic overpotential for proton reduction by 250 mV as compared to the uncaged catalyst, while the proton‐rich nano‐environment created around the catalyst ensures that high catalytic rates are maintained.

Dünya üzerinde küreselleşmenin etkisi rekabetin küresel düzeye taşınmasıdır. Rekabetin giderek şiddetini artırdığı küresel dünyada ülkelerin varlığını sürdürebilmesinin temelinde inovasyon yer almaktadır. Karmaşık yapıya sahip olan inovasyon kavramı, ulusal inovasyon sistemleri ve inovasyon politikaları ile çözülmeye çalışılmaktadır. Çalışmada, inovasyon göstergelerinde öncü olarak kabul edilen ülkelerden Amerika Birleşik Devletleri, İngiltere’nin ulusal inovasyon sistem ve politikaları incelenmiştir. Bu ülkelerle birlikte Türkiye’nin de ulusal inovasyon sistem ve politikaları ele alınmıştır. Bu incelemeler sonucunda, Türkiye’nin bilim ve teknoloji konusunda dünyadaki gelişmeleri detaylı bir şekilde izlemesi ve bu gelişmelerin elde edilmesinde ülkelerin kullandığı yol haritalarını kendi ülkesine uygun hale getirmesi gerektiği sonucuna varılmıştır. Bu bağlamda, Amerika Birleşik Devletleri ve İngiltere’nin ulusal inovasyon sistem ve politikalarında öne çıkan kilit noktalar dikkate alınarak, Türkiye’nin inovasyon performansını artırabilecek tespit ve öneriler sunulmuştur

Oxygen formation through water oxidation catalysis is a key reaction in the context of fuel generation from renewable energies. The number of homogeneous catalysts that catalyze water oxidation at high rate with low overpotential is limited. Ruthenium complexes can be particularly active, especially if they facilitate a dinuclear pathway for oxygen bond formation step. A supramolecular encapsulation strategy is reported that involves preorganization of dilute solutions (10−5 m) of ruthenium complexes to yield high local catalyst concentrations (up to 0.54 m). The preorganization strategy enhances the water oxidation rate by two‐orders of magnitude to 125 s−1, as it facilitates the diffusion‐controlled rate‐limiting dinuclear coupling step. Moreover, it modulates reaction rates, enabling comprehensive elucidation of electrocatalytic reaction mechanisms.

The tripodal, tetradentate tris(1‐(diphenylphosphanyl)‐3‐methyl‐1H‐indol‐2‐yl)phosphane PP3‐ligand 1 stabilizes Ru in the RuII, RuI, and Ru0 oxidation states. The octahedral [(PP3)RuII(Cl)2] (2), distorted trigonal bipyramidal [(PP3)RuI(Cl)] (3), and trigonal bipyramidal [(PP3)Ru0(N2)] (4) complexes were isolated and characterized by single‐crystal X‐ray diffraction, NMR, EPR, IR, and ESI‐MS. Both open‐shell metalloradical RuI complex 3 and the closed‐shell Ru0 complex 4 undergo facile (net) abstraction of a Cl atom from dichloromethane, resulting in formation of the corresponding RuII and RuI complexes 2 and 3, respectively.