Molecular Catalysts for Water Splitting and Oxygen Reduction
This community designs and characterizes molecular metal complexes that mimic the function of natural enzymes to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, and to reduce oxygen, primarily for the development of efficient electrocatalysts and photocatalysts.
The research focuses on synthesizing and structurally characterizing coordination complexes of cobalt, manganese, copper, iron, and nickel, frequently utilizing porphyrin and Schiff base ligands. These molecular systems are investigated for their ability to catalyze the water oxidation and hydrogen evolution reactions, as well as the oxygen reduction reaction. The work emphasizes understanding the relationship between the ligand environment and the catalytic activity, with a strong emphasis on mimicking the active sites of metalloenzymes like photosystem II and hydrogenases to improve the efficiency of energy conversion processes.
The largest share of the community's output is found in manganese research, accounting for 3.4% of all manganese research, and 5,004 papers here. It also represents 2.8% of all ruthenium research and 2.4% of all cobalt research.
The community comprises 26,309 papers, publishing most frequently in Inorganic Chemistry, the Journal of the American Chemical Society, and Inorganica Chimica Acta.
Recent work continues to refine the electronic and structural properties of iron and cobalt porphyrins to optimize oxygen reduction pathways, while also exploring the engineering of electron relays in hydrogenase models to enhance electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution.