New Rutgers research team takes lessons from natural photosynthesis to develop a bioinspired water oxidation catalyst: A renewable source of hydrogen fuel

Hydrogen remains the most promising fuel of the future owing to its carbon-free high-energy content and potential to be efficiently converted to either electrical or thermal energy. However, most of it on earth is locked up in a stable form we know as water. The development of inexpensive yet effective catalysts from cheap earth-abundant materials remains the greatest technical barrier limiting access to this renewable source of energy. The second challenge is mating this catalyst to a suitable photovoltaic device to enable solar energy to power the chemical transformations needed to extract the hydrogen and oxygen. To date, the most efficient system for using solar energy to split water is nature's photosynthetic enzyme called the Water-Oxidizing Complex (PSII-WOC). The catalytic core of this enzyme contains a CaMn₄O_x cluster that is present in all known species of oxygenic phototrophs and apparently conserved since the emergence of this type of photosynthesis ca. 2.5 billion years ago. Professor Charles Dismukes, a new arrival with appointments in the Department of Chemistry & Chemical Biology and the Waksman Institute, has coauthored work presented at the American Chemical Society meeting in Washington D.C. which describes an abiotic synthetic mimic of the PSII-WOC system. The ACS paper was featured in a news account in the September 4th issue of Science Magazine.

September 3, 2009 - Three federal grants totaling $7.65 million have been awarded to the university to fund graduate research in clean and sustainable energy and continue other research projects previously funded by the National Science Foundation.
Officials said that the awards are the fifth and sixth of such grants the foundation has awarded Rutgers over the past six years. Only a handful of universities have received two of these grants in 2009. 
The energy research grants are funded under the National Science Foundation's five-year Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship program, which supports students pursuing doctorates in fields that cross academic disciplines and have broad societal impact.

Editorial: Future Energy Institutes
Paul G. Falkowski and Robert M. Goodman
Science 7 August 2009: 655.

The landmark energy bill wending its way through congress this summer seeks to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases and supports the development of alternative energies, including solar and wind power. It’s a bill that aims to create both a “green” U.S. economy and a sustainable environment.
At this critical juncture, America must take an equally sustainable view toward investing in the brainpower required to confront the world’s complex energy issues.