Sandra Luber
University of Zurich, Switzerland
Title: Efficient cubane catalysts for artificial water-splitting
Biography
Biography: Sandra Luber
Abstract
Solar energy is an inexhaustible energy source for a long-term solution to the global energy consumption. The storage of large amounts of light energy can be achieved by conversion into chemical energy saved in biomass. Artificial photosynthesis permits the splitting of water into dihydrogen and dioxygen and is therefore a sustainable strategy to meet the increasing worldwide need for clean energy. This requires the development of high-performance waterreduction and water-oxidation catalysts (WOCs) that can be combined to an overall artificial photocatalytic water-splitting system. Very recently, the first Co(II)-based cubane WOCs have been presented. These WOCs excel through hitherto unprecedented structural analogies to the oxygen-evolving complex of nature’s photosystem II. We study their structure and activity by means of density functional theory (DFT) in combination with innovative DFT-based molecular dynamics. I will give an overview about our recent results for the design of efficient cubane-type catalysts.
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