Sustainable Oxidation Catalysis: Metal-Free and Earth-Abundant Metal Approaches

Oxidation catalysis is a cornerstone of synthetic chemistry, enabling the transformation of simple feedstocks into valuable chemicals and materials. However, many established oxidation processes rely on precious metals or stoichiometric oxidants that present economic, environmental, and safety concerns. Recent research has increasingly focused on developing catalytic systems based on earth‑abundant metals or entirely metal‑free frameworks that use green oxidants such as molecular oxygen or hydrogen peroxide. Advances in this area have demonstrated that sustainable approaches can deliver comparable or even superior performance to conventional systems, especially in terms of efficiency and selectivity. Despite this progress, challenges remain in achieving robust catalyst stability, controlling selectivity, and extending these methods to complex substrates and large‑scale applications. A consolidated investigation of design principles, mechanistic understanding, and synthetic utility is therefore needed to advance sustainability in oxidation catalysis.

This Research Topic aims to highlight and accelerate progress in sustainable oxidation catalysis by promoting the development and understanding of metal‑free and earth‑abundant metal systems. It seeks to gather studies that address fundamental and practical challenges in the field, including how to achieve high turnover efficiency, catalytic robustness, and precise selectivity under mild conditions. The Topic welcomes research that tests new hypotheses about structure–reactivity relationships, explores activation mechanisms, or demonstrates practical routes for greener oxidation processes. By uniting theoretical insight with experimental innovation, this collection intends to identify principles that can guide the design of future catalytic platforms for environmentally responsible synthetic chemistry.

This Research Topic will encompass studies that focus on catalytic oxidation using either metal‑free or earth‑abundant metal strategies. The scope includes both fundamental and applied investigations. To gather further insights into sustainable oxidation processes, we welcome articles addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:

• Oxidation of alcohols, alkenes, amines, sulfides, and biomass‑derived substrates
• Metal‑free organocatalytic oxidation
• Iron, cobalt, manganese, copper, and nickel‑based oxidation systems
• Electrocatalytic and photocatalytic oxidation methods
• Mechanistic, kinetic, or computational studies of oxidation pathways
• Design principles for enhancing selectivity, turnover, and catalyst stability
• Demonstrations of synthetic or industrial relevance that improve sustainability

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• Mini Review
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Review

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• Mini Review
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Review

Keywords: Sustainable oxidation catalysis, Metal-free catalysis, Earth-abundant metals, Selective oxidation, Green chemistry

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.