Leif Hammarström

Biomimetic and Microbial Approaches to Solar Fuel Generation

Photosynthesis is performed by a multitude of organisms, but in nearly all cases, it is variations on a common theme: absorption of light followed by energy transfer to a reaction center where charge separation takes place. This initial form of chemical energy is stabilized by the biosynthesis of carbohydrates. To produce these energy-rich products, a substrate is needed that feeds in reductive equivalents. When photosynthetic microorganisms learned to use water as a substrate some 2 billion years ago, a fundamental barrier against unlimited use of solar energy was overcome. The possibility of solar energy use has inspired researchers to construct artificial photosynthetic systems that show analogy to parts of the intricate molecular machinery of photosynthesis. Recent years have seen a reorientation of efforts toward creating integrated light-to-fuel systems that can use solar energy for direct synthesis of energy-rich compounds, so-called solar fuels. Sustainable production of solar fuels is a long awaited development that promises extensive solar energy use combined with long-term storage. The stoichiometry of water splitting into molecular oxygen, protons, and electrons is deceptively simple; achieving it by chemical catalysis has proven remarkably difficult. The reaction center Photosystem II couples light-induced charge separation to an efficient molecular water-splitting catalyst, a Mn(4)Ca complex, and is thus an important template for biomimetic chemistry. In our aims to design biomimetic manganese complexes for light-driven water oxidation, we link photosensitizers and charge-separation motifs to potential catalysts in supramolecular assemblies. In photosynthesis, production of carbohydrates demands the delivery of multiple reducing equivalents to CO(2). In contrast, the two-electron reduction of protons to molecular hydrogen is much less demanding. Virtually all microorganisms have enzymes called hydrogenases that convert protons to hydrogen, many of them with good catalytic efficiency. The catalytic sites of hydrogenases are now the center of attention of biomimetic efforts, providing prospects for catalytic hydrogen production with inexpensive metals. Thus, we might complete the water-to-fuel conversion: light + 2H(2)O --> 2H(2) + O(2). This reaction formula is to some extent already elegantly fulfilled by cyanobacteria and green algae, water-splitting photosynthetic microorganisms that under certain conditions also can produce hydrogen. An alternative route to hydrogen from solar energy is therefore to engineer these organisms to produce hydrogen more efficiently. This Account describes our original approach to combine research in these two fields: mimicking structural and functional principles of both Photosystem II and hydrogenases by synthetic chemistry and engineering cyanobacteria to become better hydrogen producers and ultimately developing new routes toward synthetic biology.

A p-Type NiO-Based Dye-Sensitized Solar Cell with an Open-Circuit Voltage of 0.35 V

In tandem: Employing a molecular dyad and a cobalt-based electrolyte gives a threefold-increase in open-circuit voltage (V(OC)) for a p-type NiO device (V(OC) = 0.35 V), and a fourfold better energy conversion efficiency. Incorporating these improvements in a TiO(2)/NiO tandem dye-sensitized solar cell (TDSC), results in a TDSC with a V(OC) = 0.91 V (see figure; CB = conductance band, VB = valence band).

Artificial Photosynthesis and Solar Fuels

The development and well-being of society rely on sufficient energy supplies, and concerns about our strong dependence on fossil fuels have been rapidly increasing. At present, more than 80% of our primary energy is provided by fossil fuels. In addition to limitations in availability and geo-political problems associated with fossil fuels, the emission of green-house gases upon the use of fossil fuels has been recognized as a significant threat to our current living conditions. Thus, new sources of energy that provide a large-scale, sustainable energy supply must be developed. Solar energy is one of the few alternative energy sources that could be scaled up to meet our future demands. More solar energy reaches our planet in one hour than is consumed by mankind in a year, and consequently we would need to harvest less than 0.02% of this solar energy to fulfill all of our energy requirements. Solar energy can be converted into several different useful forms: heat, electricity, and fuels. Most of these technologies have not yet been fully explored and developed. Of particular interest is the development of solar fuels, which are concentrated energy carriers with long-term storage capacity produced by energy input from solar irradiation. These fuels would play an important role in balancing out the daily and yearly local variations in solar irradiation. Solar fuels are expected to become an important contributor to our future energy systems. Fuels can be produced from solar energy by both indirect and direct pathways. Examples of indirect pathways include conversion of biomass to biogas, as well as hydrogen production by electrolysis of water using electricity from photovoltaics. Direct pathways produce the fuel directly in an integrated system, without intermediate energy carriers. Artificial photosynthesis is an example of a direct pathway for producing solar energy. Natural photosynthesis in green plants, algae, and cyanobacteria use solar energy to convert carbon dioxide and water to fuel, primarily energy rich carbohydrates. The basis of artificial photosynthesis is not to copy this process but rather to learn from it and reproduce the same principles in much smaller man-made systems. A variety of fuels may be produced by artificial photosynthesis. Carbon-based fuels formed by reduction of carbon dioxide would be most attractive, but the multielectron catalytic chemistry involved makes this a challenging goal. Hydrogen production from protons is a two-electron process, which makes efficient fuel production less demanding, although its efficient storage is more difficult. Natural oxygenic photosynthesis uses water as raw material for the ultimate source of electrons in reductive fuel production. Use of this abundant substrate, however, requires mastering of the multielectron oxidation of two water molecules to molecular oxygen. This process is well-managed in Nature with good efficiency, but it has been very difficult to achieve with artificial homogeneous catalysts. This special issue collects Accounts on natural photosynthetic principles, as well as biomimetic and artificial photosynthetic systems. The focus lies on predominantly molecular systems and processes, which could be part of an integrated artificial photosynthetic system for solar fuel production. Research directed toward understanding molecular mechanisms of photosynthetic energy conversion and biomimetic systems, which may provide strategies for artificial photosynthesis, is presented. The realization of photosynthetic principles in artificial light-harvesting and supramolecular assembly strategies for efficient light-induced charge separation in molecular and nanoscale systems is also described. Moreover, work on the coupling of artificial photosynthetic charge separation to multielectron/proton transfer and catalysis is reviewed. Finally, research on homogeneous catalysts for hydrogen production, carbon dioxide reduction, and water oxidation is presented.

High-Turnover Photochemical Hydrogen Production Catalyzed by a Model Complex of the [FeFe]-Hydrogenase Active Site

In light of its rapidly growing energy demand, human society has an urgent need to become much more strongly reliant on renewable and sustainable energy carriers. Molecular hydrogen made from water with solar energy could provide an ideal case. The development of inexpensive, robust and rare element free catalysts is crucial for this technology to succeed. Enzymes in nature can give us ideas about what such catalysts could look like, but for the directed adjustment of any natural or synthetic catalyst to the requirements of large scale catalysis, its capabilities and limitations need to be understood on the level of individual reaction steps. This thesis deals with kinetic and mechanistic investigations of photo- and electrocatalytic hydrogen production with natural and synthetic molecular catalysts. Photochemical hydrogen production can be achieved with both E. coli Hyd-2 [NiFe] hydrogenase and a synthetic dinuclear [FeFe] hydrogenase active site model by ruthenium polypyridyl photosensitization. The overall quantum yields are on the order of several percent. Transient UV-Vis absorption experiments reveal that these yields are strongly controlled by the competition of charge recombination reactions with catalysis. With the hydrogenase major electron losses occur at the stage of enzyme reduction by the reduced photosensitizer. In contrast, catalyst reduction is very efficient in case of the synthetic dinuclear active site model. Here, losses presumably occur at the stage of reduced catalyst intermediates. Moreover, the synthetic catalyst is prone to structural changes induced by competing ligands such as secondary amines or DMF, which lead to catalytically active, potentially mononuclear, species. Investigations of electrocatalytic hydrogen production with a mononuclear catalyst by cyclic voltammetry provide detailed kinetic and mechanistic information on the catalyst itself. By extension of existing theory, it is possible to distinguish between alternative catalytic pathways and to extract rate constants for individual steps of catalysis. The equilibrium constant for catalyst protonation can be determined, and limits can be set on both the protonation and deprotonation rate constant. Hydrogen bond formation likely involves two catalyst molecules, and even the second order rate constant characterizing hydrogen bond formation and/or release can be determined.

Accumulative Charge Separation for Solar Fuels Production: Coupling Light-Induced Single Electron Transfer to Multielectron Catalysis

The conversion and storage of solar energy into a fuel holds promise to provide a significant part of the future renewable energy demand of our societies. Solar energy technologies today generate heat or electricity, while the large majority of our energy is used in the form of fuels. Direct conversion of solar energy to a fuel would satisfy our needs for storable energy on a large scale. Solar fuels can be generated by absorbing light and converting its energy to chemical energy by electron transfer leading to separation of electrons and holes. The electrons are used in the catalytic reduction of a cheap substrate with low energy content into a high-energy fuel. The holes are filled by oxidation of water, which is the only electron source available for large scale solar fuel production. Absorption of a single photon typically leads to separation of a single electron-hole pair. In contrast, fuel production and water oxidation are multielectron, multiproton reactions. Therefore, a system for direct solar fuel production must be able to accumulate the electrons and holes provided by the sequential absorption of several photons in order to complete the catalytic reactions. In this Account, the process is termed accumulative charge separation. This is considerably more complicated than charge separation on a single electron level and needs particular attention. Semiconductor materials and molecular dyes have for a long time been optimized for use in photovoltaic devices. Efforts are made to develop new systems for light harvesting and charge separation that are better optimized for solar fuel production than those used in the early devices presented so far. Significant progress has recently been made in the discovery and design of better homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysts for solar fuels and water oxidation. While the heterogeneous ones perform better today, molecular catalysts based on transition metal complexes offer much greater tunability of electronic and structural properties, they are typically more amenable to mechanistic analysis, and they are small and therefore require less material. Therefore, they have arguably greater potential as future efficient catalysts but must be efficiently coupled to accumulative charge separation. This Account discusses accumulative charge separation with focus on molecular and molecule-semiconductor hybrid systems. The coupling between charge separation and catalysis involves many challenges that are often overlooked, and they are not always apparent when studying water oxidation and fuel formation as separate half-reactions with sacrificial agents. Transition metal catalysts, as well as other multielectron donors and acceptors, cycle through many different states that may quench the excited sensitizer by nonproductive pathways. Examples where this has been shown, often with ultrafast rates, are reviewed. Strategies to avoid these competing energy-loss reactions and still obtain efficient coupling of charge separation to catalysis are discussed. This includes recent examples of dye-sensitized semiconductor devices with molecular catalysts and dyes that realize complete water splitting, albeit with limited efficiency.

Mimicking the electron donor side of Photosystem II in artificial photosynthesis

This review focuses on our recent efforts in synthetic ruthenium–tyrosine–manganese chemistry mimicking the donor side reactions of Photosystem II. Tyrosine and tryptophan residues were linked to ruthenium photosensitizers, which resulted in model complexes for proton-coupled electron transfer from amino acids. A new mechanistic model was proposed and used to design complexes in which the mechanism could be switched between concerted and step-wise proton-coupled electron transfer. Moreover, a manganese dimer linked to a ruthenium complex could be oxidized in three successive steps, from Mn2II,II to Mn2III,IV by the photo-oxidized ruthenium sensitizer. This was possible thanks to a charge compensating ligand exchange in the manganese complex. Detailed studies of the ligand exchange suggested that at high water concentrations, each oxidation step is coupled to a proton-release of water-derived ligands, analogous to the oxidation steps of the manganese cluster of Photosystem II.

Very large acceleration of the photoinduced electron transfer in a Ru(bpy)3–naphthalene bisimide dyad bridged on the naphthyl core

By linking a naphthalenebisimide (NBI) unit to [Ru(bpy)3]2+ on the naphthyl core the rate of photoinduced Ru-to-NBI electron transfer was 1000-fold increased compared to the case with a conventional linking on the nitrogen.

Proton-Coupled Electron Transfer from Tyrosine: A Strong Rate Dependence on Intramolecular Proton Transfer Distance

Proton-coupled electron transfer (PCET) was examined in a series of biomimetic, covalently linked Ru(II)(bpy)(3)-tyrosine complexes where the phenolic proton was H-bonded to an internal base (a benzimidazyl or pyridyl group). Photooxidation in laser flash/quench experiments generated the Ru(III) species, which triggered long-range electron transfer from the tyrosine group concerted with short-range proton transfer to the base. The results give an experimental demonstration of the strong dependence of the rate constant and kinetic isotope effect for this intramolecular PCET reaction on the effective proton transfer distance, as reflected by the experimentally determined proton donor-acceptor distance.

Proton-coupled electron transfer of tyrosines in Photosystem II and model systems for artificial photosynthesis: the role of a redox-active link between catalyst and photosensitizer

Water oxidation in Photosystem II is dependent on a particular amino acid residue, TyrosineZ. This is a redox intermediate in steady state oxygen evolution and transfers electrons from the water splitting CaMn4 cluster to the central chlorophyll radical P680+. This Perspective discusses the functional principles of TyrosineZ as a proton-coupled redox active link, as well as mechanistic studies of synthetic model systems and implications for artificial photosynthesis. Experimental studies of temperature dependence and kinetic isotope effects are important tools to understand these reactions. We emphasize the importance of proton transfer distance and hydrogen bond dynamics that are responsible for variation in the rate of PCET by several orders of magnitude. The mechanistic principles discussed and their functional significance are not limited to tyrosine and biological systems, but are important to take into account when constructing artificial photosynthetic systems. Of particular importance is the role of proton transfer management in water splitting and solar fuel catalysis.

Photo-induced oxidation of a dinuclear Mn(2)(II,II) complex to the Mn(2)(III,IV) state by inter- and intramolecular electron transfer to Ru(III)tris-bipyridine.

To model the structural and functional parts of the water oxidizing complex in Photosystem II, a dimeric manganese(II,II) complex (1) was linked to a ruthenium(II)tris-bipyridine (Ru(II)(bpy)(3)) complex via a substituted L-tyrosine, to form the trinuclear complex 2 [J. Inorg. Biochem. 78 (2000) 15]. Flash photolysis of 1 and Ru(II)(bpy)(3) in aqueous solution, in the presence of an electron acceptor, resulted in the stepwise extraction of three electrons by Ru(III)(bpy)(3) from the Mn(2)(II,II) dimer, which then attained the Mn(2)(III,IV) oxidation state. In a similar experiment with compound 2, the dinuclear Mn complex reduced the photo-oxidized Ru moiety via intramolecular electron transfer on each photochemical event. From EPR it was seen that 2 also reached the Mn(2)(III,IV) state. Our data indicate that oxidation from the Mn(2)(II,II) state proceeds stepwise via intermediate formation of Mn(2)(II,III) and Mn(2)(III,III). In the presence of water, cyclic voltammetry showed an additional anodic peak beyond Mn(2)(II,III/III,III) oxidation which was significantly lower than in neat acetonitrile. Assuming that this peak is due to oxidation to Mn(2)(III,IV), this suggests that water is essential for the formation of the Mn(2)(III,IV) oxidation state. Compound 2 is a structural mimic of the water oxidizing complex, in that it links a Mn complex via a tyrosine to a highly oxidizing photosensitizer. Complex 2 also mimics mechanistic aspects of Photosystem II, in that the electron transfer to the photosensitizer is fast and results in several electron extractions from the Mn moiety.