In order to suppress the hypothetic direct pathway to octane, we decided to turn towards bimetallic nanoparticles. Selective poisoning of some of the activesites of a catalyst by a second metal is a common method to improve the selectivity. Our bimetallic nanoparticles were prepared by adding a second cheap metal halide (NiCl2, CoCl 2, CuCl 2) to FeCl 3 in a 1:1 ratio and reducing both metals with 3 eq of EtMgCl.The resulting bimetallic catalysts were tested in the hydrogenation of 1-octyne (Fig. 5 for activities; Table 3 for selectivities).