Molecular Catalysts for Water Oxidation

摘要

In attempts to develop systems for converting solar energy into fuel, the efficiency and stability of the water oxidation catalysts is crucial. During the last decade, great advances have been made but we are still far from the efficiency of the natural Photosystyem II, where a tetranuclear manganese complex catalyzes water oxidation. This is driven by the excited chlorophyll, and gives a TON of ca 10~6 and a turnover rate of ca 100 s~(-1). Despite intense and successful work by many groups during the last few years, we are still far from this stability and efficiency. A major effort has been focused on noble metal complexes, mainly containing ruthenium, but lately also catalysts based on cobalt, manganese and iron have been presented.