Science generally proceeds based on a mutual interaction between theory and experiment:theory can explain experimental phenomena and propose general rules for the design of new experiments while experiment can verify theoretical predictions and discover new phenomena to improve theories.Yet,the progress of heterogeneous catalysis mainly relied on experimental advances for a long time.In its early days,heterogeneous catalysis was an empirically applied field,in which the tests of reactivity and selectivity for synthetic catalysts were based largely on a trial-and-error approach.