Toward Solar Fuel Production using Manganese/Semiconductor Systems to Mimic Photosynthesis

Abstract

To address the current energy crisis and global warming issues, novel renewable carbon-free or carbon-neutral energy sources must be identified and generated. Natural photosynthesis is a unique and an excellent example for design and mimic for solar energy storage and renewable fuel production on the large scale via water splitting chemistry. The oxygen-evolving complex of photosystem II is an oxomanganese complex that is able to catalyze water-splitting reaction to achieve energy storage on the large scale at room temperature and neutral pH in green plants, algae, and cyanobacteria. Great progress and breakthroughs in illustrating the structure and mechanism of water oxidation in photosystem II have been made using the combination of modern molecular genetics and sophiscated biophysical techniques in the past decade. In particular, the threedimensional structure of photosystem II with oxygen-evolving activity has been determined at an atomic level, which provides a complete picture with the specific position of each atom in the Mn4CaO5 cluster and