Highly Efficient Oxygen Catalyst Found 156
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Soulskill
from the fuel-for-the-cause dept.
from the fuel-for-the-cause dept.
eldavojohn writes "As detailed in the journal Science (abstract), a new compound composed of cobalt, iron and oxygen with other metals presents us with the most efficient way (found so far) of splitting oxygen atoms from water. These ten known compounds provide a reactivity rate that is at least an order of magnitude higher than what is currently known as the gold standard in such reactions. During their research, the team discovered that the reactivity is dependent on the configuration of the outermost electron of transition metal ions, which they exploited to develop this efficient catalyst. For rechargeable batteries and hydrogen fuel, this is exciting work from MIT's Jin Suntivich, Kevin J. May, Hubert A. Gasteiger, and Yang Shao-Horn, and the University of Texas's John B. Goodenough."
Re:Hydrogen (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless of course the hydrogen binds to another chemical in the process of catalysing.
Re:Catalyst Theory? (Score:5, Insightful)
Think about this paper. I haven't read it yet, but from the abstract, it looks like it's about a group of researchers finding a single parameter that controls the activity of a particular, narrow class of materials for a particular reaction, and then exploiting that to create an optimal catalyst within this class of materials for that reaction. And for doing that, they were published in Science, which suggests that it's fairly clever, important, and original work. That should give you an idea about what the state of the art is in catalyst design.
John Goodenough, by the way, is about 90 years old, still sharp as a tack, and a world expert in metal oxides (what the catalysts in this study were made out of). Back in the 70s, he "invented" (that's probably not the best word) the cathode material that's still being used in most commercial Li-ion batteries. I just say that to make the point that this research was probably not something that many people have the depth of understanding to do.
Re:Hope? (Score:2, Insightful)
Nope. It is a MIT press release of their typical "world changing" science that, for some reason, never sees the light of day. They make one of these astounding announcements every few months.