Bio-inspired Solar Light Driven Hydrogen Production

能源是21世纪最重要的问题之一，因为我们未来的供应目前受到化石燃料储量逐步减少、政治不稳定以及导致污染和全球变暖的环境问题的威胁。可再生氢气H2被广泛认为是一种潜在的未来燃料，但其廉价高效的生产仍然是一个重大的实际问题。太阳为我们的星球提供源源不断的电磁和无碳能源，它是唯一能够满足人类长期能源需求的能源。这个由EPSRC资助的项目的目的是开发一种高效的生物启发制氢催化剂，利用丰富而廉价的原材料，并将其耦合到捕光复合体，以捕获太阳提供的能量，以从水中生产氢气-将太阳能储存在氢气的化学键中。如果要真正将氢气作为一种可持续的燃料推广，就需要选择和经济的化学催化剂来实现能量、水和氢气的中央化学互换。通常使用的贵金属催化剂(如铂)不能用于后化石燃料时代的氢气生产，原因是(I)资源有限和成本高，(Ii)反应选择性差(例如，能量被浪费在不想要的副反应上)，以及(Iii)微量常见化学品(如一氧化碳)中毒(催化剂死亡)。微生物生命形式利用生物催化剂(氢酶)在室温和中性pH的安全条件下快速地从水中选择性和可逆地生产氢气来处理具有挑战性的任务。氢酶的催化反应中心(活性中心)包含一个铁或镍-铁金属中心，通常被半胱氨酸、一氧化碳和氰化物配体包围。因此，氢酶的活性部位是一个有趣的生物基序来模拟，以便从丰富和廉价的原材料中构建制氢催化剂。这项关于太阳能制氢的探索性工作有望成为实现大规模水光解以实现可持续氢经济的基本步骤。在我的指导下，在酶生物学、光谱学、太阳能电池、纳米粒子和中子衍射方面具有专业知识的国际(法国、美国)和国家(曼彻斯特)学术界和工业界(Evonik Industries)的合作伙伴将支持这个项目。此外，这项关于生物启发/仿生制氢催化剂的工作还将涉及废水处理、精细化学品的合成，并可能让我们深入了解生物如何在分子水平上将水转化为氢，并揭示反向反应是如何工作的：从氢中产生能量，这对燃料电池的应用非常重要。

Energy is one of the most important issues of the twenty-first century, because our future supply is currently threatened by progressively decreasing fossil fuel reserves, political instability and environmental problems resulting in pollution and global warming. Renewable hydrogen, H2, is widely considered as a potential future fuel, but its cheap and efficient production is still a major unresolved practical issue. The sun provides our planet with a continuous flow of electromagnetic and carbon-free energy and it is the only energy source, which is capable of sustaining human kind's long-term energy demand. The aim of this EPSRC-funded project is the development of an efficient bio-inspired H2 production catalyst from abundant and inexpensive raw materials and its coupling to light-harvesting complexes to capture energy provided by the sun to power H2 production from water - the storage of solar energy in the chemical bond of H2.Selective and economical chemical catalysts are needed for the central chemical interconversion of energy, water and H2 if there is to be a real prospect of promoting H2 as a sustainable fuel. Commonly employed precious metal catalysts (e.g. platinum) cannot be used for H2 production in the post-fossil fuel era, because of (i) limited resources and high cost, (ii) poor reaction selectivity (e.g. energy is wasted on unwanted side-reactions), and (iii) poisoning (catalyst-killing) by trace amounts of common chemicals, e.g. carbon monoxide. Microbial life forms handle the challenging task of H2 production using bio-catalysts (hydrogenases) to drive the selective and reversible production of H2 from water at fast rates under the safe conditions of room temperature and neutral pH. The catalytic reaction centre (active site) of hydrogenases contains an iron or nickel-iron metal centre surrounded typically by cysteine, carbon monoxide and cyanide ligands. Thus, the active site of a hydrogenase is an interesting biological motif to mimic in order to build H2 production catalysts from abundant and inexpensive raw materials. This adventurous work on solar H2 production has the prospect of being a fundamental step towards large-scale water photolysis for a sustainable hydrogen economy. International (France, USA) and national (Manchester) academic as well as industrial (Evonik Industries) collaborators with expertise in enzyme biology, spectroscopy, solar cells, nanoparticles, and neutron diffraction will support this project under my guidance. In addition, this work on bio-inspired/biomimetic H2 production catalysts will also deal with wastewater treatment, the synthesis of fine chemicals, and might give us insight into how living organisms convert water into H2 on a molecular level, and reveal how the reverse reaction works: the generation of energy from H2, which is important for fuel cell applications.