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Title: Highly Oxidized Metal Species in Water Splitting and Solar Fuels Production

Abstract: The integration of photovoltaics and catalysts into a useful system for solar energy conversion will require a number of advances, such as the development of high efficiency, nanoscaled photovoltaic units, the discovery of inexpensive electrocatalysts for the half-reactions of interest, and the incorporation of efficient catalysts onto the surfaces of the photovoltaics. For schemes based on water oxidation, it is possible to envision catalysts derived from molecular transition metal complexes, or from inorganic solid-state materials. Molecular catalysts for water oxidation are somewhat controversial, since ligands in the catalytic species may readily undergo degradation under highly oxidizing conditions. Also, it is difficult to confidently associate catalytic activity with a particular molecular species, since these may oxidatively decompose to catalytic metal oxide materials under the conditions of electro- or photo-catalysis. However, molecularly derived catalysts offer a number of potential advantages, including the synthetic tunability of structure-activity relationships and chemical properties. Also, molecular precursor methods may be used to produce nanostructured, robust heterogeneous catalysts of controlled structure. To read more, please visit our website below.