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Solar Energy for Fuels pp 49–72Cite as

Biomimetic Water-Oxidation Catalysts: Manganese Oxides

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Part of the book series: Topics in Current Chemistry ((TOPCURRCHEM,volume 371))

Abstract

The catalytic oxidation of water to molecular oxygen is a key process for the production of solar fuels. Inspired by the biological manganese-based active site for this reaction in the enzyme Photosystem II, researchers have made impressive progress in the last decades regarding the development of synthetic manganese catalysts for water oxidation. For this, it has been especially fruitful to explore the many different types of known manganese oxides MnO x .

This chapter first offers an overview of the structural, thermodynamic, and mechanistic aspects of water-oxidation catalysis by MnO x . The different test systems used for catalytic studies are then presented together with general reactivity trends. As a result, it has been possible to identify layered, mixed MnIII/IV-oxides as an especially promising class of bio-inspired catalysts and an attempt is made to give structure-based reasons for the good performances of these materials.

In the outlook, the challenges of catalyst screenings (and hence the identification of a “best MnO x catalyst”) are discussed. There is a great variety of reaction conditions which might be relevant for the application of manganese oxide catalysts in technological solar fuel-producing devices, and thus catalyst improvements are currently still addressing a very large parameter space. Nonetheless, detailed knowledge about the biological catalyst and a solid experimental basis concerning the syntheses and water-oxidation reactivities of MnO x materials have been established in the last decade and thus this research field is well positioned to make important contributions to solar fuel research in the future.

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Acknowledgements

First and foremost I would like to thank the Ph.D. students of my research group who have worked very hard in recent years to broaden our understanding of MnO x WOR catalysis: Carolin E. Frey, Seung Y. Lee, M. Mahdi Najafpour, and Mathias Wiechen. In Freiburg special thanks go to Jann Sonnenfeld for preparing Fig. 2. Additionally, the close collaboration with Holger Dau and Ivelina Zaharieva at Freie Universität Berlin has been a great source of inspiration and results since its start in 2008. Finally, I would like to acknowledge generous financial support by the Fonds der Chemischen Industrie (FCI) and the German Science Foundation (DFG).

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  1. Institut für Anorganische und Analytische Chemie, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Albertstraße 21, 79104, Freiburg, Germany

    Philipp Kurz

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  1. Philipp Kurz
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Correspondence to Philipp Kurz .

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  1. Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung, Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany

    Harun Tüysüz

  2. Materials Science and Engineering School for Engineering of Matter, Transport and Energy, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA

    Candace K. Chan

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Kurz, P. (2015). Biomimetic Water-Oxidation Catalysts: Manganese Oxides. In: Tüysüz, H., Chan, C. (eds) Solar Energy for Fuels. Topics in Current Chemistry, vol 371. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/128_2015_634

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