Abstract This paper constructs a scale-free chemical network based on the Gierer-Meinhardt (GM) system and investigates its Turing instability. We establish a fractional-order single-node GM system with delay and design a fractional-order proportional derivative (PD) control strategy for the issue of bifurcation control. Using delay as bifurcation parameter, the existence of Hopf bifurcation is proven, and control over bifurcation threshold points is achieved through a fractional-order PD control strategy. For the scale-free chemical network based on the GM system, we obtain the condition of how the Turing instability occurs. We derive how the number of edges for the new nodes changes the stability of the network-organized system and investigate the relationship between degrees of nodes and eigenvalues of the network matrix. We give the instability condition caused by diffusion in the network-organized system. Finally, the numerical simulations verify analytical results.