In Pursuit of Water Oxidation Catalysts for Solar Fuel Production

摘要

Roughly three-fourths of the power generated globally comes from burning fossil fuels. For solar energy to compete directly as a replacement, technologies are needed to capture this energy in a chemical form-as a fuel-so it can be used when sunlight is not available. One bottleneck in the development of practical solar fuels is the water oxidation reaction. Water is the only potential source of electrons capable of reducing protons to H_2 or CO_2 to carbonaceous fuels on a global scale. Thus, while there may be many options for reduction catalysts, redox cycling inevitably requires the coupling of reduction reactions to water oxidation (see the figure, panel A).