Raney nickel is a solid heterogeneous catalyst, which is composed of nickel-aluminum alloy fine particles with porous structure. American engineer Murray Laney first used it as a catalyst for the hydrogenation of vegetable oil. Because Laney is a registered trademark of Grace Chemical Company, strictly speaking, only the products produced by Davidson Chemical Department of this company can be called Laney Nickel.

Its preparation method is to treat nickel-aluminum alloy with concentrated sodium hydroxide solution. In this process, most aluminum will react with sodium hydroxide to dissolve, leaving many micropores of different sizes. In this way, raney nickel is a fine gray powder on the surface, but from the microscopic point of view, every tiny particle in the powder has a three-dimensional porous structure, which greatly increases its surface area and brings high catalytic activity, which makes raney nickel widely used as a heterogeneous catalyst in hydrogenation reactions of organic synthesis and industrial production. However, "metal skeleton catalyst" or "sponge metal catalyst" is used to refer to a catalyst with a microporous structure and physical and chemical properties similar to Raney nickel.