Manganese Oxides as Efficient Water Oxidation Catalysts

The sun has the potential to be used as a clean and almost in-exhaustible energy source, but to take full advantage of its enormous potential, solutions for the capture and conversion of solar energy into readily utilizable and storable forms are urgently required. Inspired by photosynthesis, sunlight-driven water splitting is an intensely discussed and investigated approach for the production of H-2 as a so-called solar fuel. In such a reaction scheme, the efficient catalysis of the water oxidation half-reaction represents one of the major challenges. Four electrons and four protons, the desired educts for H-2 production, have to be extracted from two molecules of water and O-2 is produced as a by-product [Eq. (1)].([1])