In catalysis research the number of possible combinations is virtually infinite. It is not possible to try all of them. So, in addition to performing experiments, the need remains for being very smart in the selection of experiments. The greatest improvement by HSS is found in the rapid discovery of leads and of small scale testing. HSS cannot speed up the development of stable catalysts.
Bottlenecks remain especially in the up-scaling to a commercial product.
Figure 1 Development of a catalyst from idea to commercial product Combinatorial methods were first used for the discovery of new pharmaceuticals. Recently, this technology has been applied to the discovery of new catalysts. There are important differences between combinatorial chemistry for discovery of drugs and for discovery of catalysts, which make the latter far more complicated. The number of possible combinations of parameters relevant for catalysts is simply too large to try them all. A popular approach is to do experiments in steps, called 'generations'.