Water-Oxidation Catalysis by Cobalt Polyoxometalates vs Anion-Stabilized Cobalt-Oxide Nanoparticles: A Critical Comparison En Route to the True, Superior Catalysts

凭借这一奖项，化学分部的化学催化项目资助了科罗拉多州立大学的Richard G. Finke进行研究，旨在确定从阳光中提取能量的最佳催化剂。将太阳能转化为可用的气体或液体燃料是发展安全、可持续能源未来的核心科学挑战。一种很有前途且研究得很充分的方法是利用太阳能将水分解成构成水的氢和氧。在使用这种方法时，科学家们正在模仿植物通过光合作用从光中提取能量的基本生命过程之一。在实验室里，在催化剂的帮助下，太阳能被用来分解水分子，催化剂可以从水中的氧原子中释放出氢原子，产生清洁燃烧的氢燃料和一种安全有用的副产品——氧气。该项目的重点是开发由钴制成的高效水分解催化剂。由于其丰富、低成本和优异的水分解能力，这些催化剂是一些最有前途的催化剂。这项工作的重点是更精确地理解这些催化剂是如何工作的，在这个过程中，将导致更好、更有效的催化剂的发展。该项目通过开发和改进一项可能至关重要的能源技术，并通过培训下一代科学家，正在产生广泛的影响。该研究正在考虑，特别是，均相钴多金属氧酸盐作为水分解催化剂。研究人员首先专注于确定真正的催化物种的性质，因为他们实验室先前的结果表明，一种多相的氧化钴实际上是主要的催化剂。目前的研究涉及另一种假设，即多相钴氧化物纳米颗粒是真正的催化剂，在催化操作条件下由钴多金属氧酸盐形成，这些多相钴氧化物纳米颗粒是一种寿命更长、活性更高的水氧化催化剂，因此是一种优越的水氧化催化剂。正在进行的研究正在帮助理清这些细节，因此，有助于开发新的和更好的催化剂，用于利用太阳能分解水。

With this award, the Chemical Catalysis Program in the Chemistry Division is funding Richard G. Finke of Colorado State University for research aimed at determining the best catalysts for the extraction of energy from sunlight. Conversion of solar energy to usable gaseous or liquid fuels is a central scientific challenge to the development of a secure, sustainable energy future. One promising and well-studied approach uses solar energy to split water into its constitutive components of hydrogen and oxygen. In using this approach, scientists are mimicking one of the basic processes of life in which plants extract the energy from light through photosynthesis. In the laboratory, solar energy is used to split a water molecule with the help of a catalyst that can release the water's hydrogen atoms from its oxygen atom, producing clean-burning hydrogen fuel plus a safe and useful byproduct, oxygen gas. This project is focused on the development of efficient water-splitting catalysts made from cobalt. These catalysts are some of the most promising ones available, due to their abundance, low-cost and superior water-splitting ability. The work is focused on more precisely understanding how these catalysts work and, in the process, is leading to the development of better and more efficient catalysts. The project is having a broad impact through the development and refinement of a potentially crucial energy technology and also through the training of a future generation of scientists.The research is considering, in particular, homogeneous cobalt polyoxometalates as water-splitting catalysts. The investigators are, first, focused on determining the nature of the true catalytic species, since prior results from their lab indicated that a heterogeneous cobalt oxide was actually the dominant catalyst. Current research involves an alternative hypothesis that heterogeneous cobalt-oxide nanoparticles are the true catalysts, formed from cobalt polyoxometalates under the catalytic operating conditions and that those heterogeneous cobalt-oxide nanoparticles are a longer lived, more active and therefore superior class of water-oxidation catalysts. The ongoing research is helping to sort out these details and, therefore, contributing to the development of new and better catalysts for the splitting of water using solar energy.