Каталитические реакции лежат в основе многих процессов химической и нефтехимической промышленности, основными применяемыми катализаторами являются системы на основе благородных и переходных металлов. Несмотря на большие преимущества, традиционные катализаторы имеют недостатки, которые связаны с высокой стоимостью благородных металлов, низкой термической и химической стабильностью, низкой устойчивостью к зауглероживанию и дезактивации поверхности. Поэтому в настоящее время одной из основных задач развития химической промышленности является поиск и разработка новых высокоактивных и стабильных катализаторов.

On the occasion of the 65th birthday of K Alex Muller (KAM), the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory in Ruschlikon, with the help of J. Georg Bednorz, offered a compilation of almost all the publications he had authored or co-authored. Those two volumes encompass thewritings until 1992. They are very useful to access KAM's earlier work, with the more than 300 papers arranged in chronological order. When KAM turned seventy, Prof. KK Phua, chairman of World Scientific, suggested to collect relevant original work in a volume to be published by this well-established house. After some reflection, Muller thought this might be a reasonable undertaking, and selected, from the then more than 400 original publications, those he considered the relevant ones. The result is this book with its eleven chapters, arranged in topological rather than chronological order. In each chapter the pertinent publications in one specific area of investigations are grouped together. Therefore it should be easy for the reader to find a paper of interest to him or her. To bring this work up to date, it also includes KAM's articles on the topics in this book published after 1992 and publications by Tom Kool, the second author, who worked in the field of oxide perovskites as well and kept helping to realize and edit the present volume <...>