The research group of Professor Kazuhito Hashimoto and their colleagues at the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Engineering, working with researchers at RIKEN (Team Leader Ryuhei Nakamura and Junior Research Associate Akira Yamaguchi), developed an artificial Manganese (Mn)-based catalyst which can split neutral water to extract electrons by utilizing the same mechanism as the natural photosynthetic system. Water molecules are one of the most abundant electron sources in nature and are an important chemical resource for creating hydrogen and organic fuels. In nature, photosynthetic organisms such as plants utilize Mn-containing enzymes to obtain electrons from water, using which they then produce carbohydrates from carbon dioxide. Inspired by and mimicking the structure of this enzyme, artificial Mn-based catalysts have been developed to extract electrons from water. Although artificially developed Mn-based catalysts can obtain electrons from water efficiently under acidic or alkaline conditions, their activity drastically decreases under neutral pH. The reason why these catalysts do not work under neutral pH and the origin of the activity difference between the natural and artificial Mn-based catalysts was unknown. The research group considered the activity difference in terms of the electron and proton transfer mechanism, and investigated the electron and proton transfer process
The post Extracting electrons from neutral water using mineral catalyst has been published on Technology Org.
#materials
See Zazzle gifts tagged with 'science'
No comments:
Post a Comment