Organometallic Water Splitting
Dr. Torsten Beweries
In the past years the use of hydrogen and the hydrogen technology were often described as ways to provide energy in a sustainable and sufficient way.1 Widely available starting materials for the generation of hydrogen are ethanol, glycerol, formic acid and water. Especially the photocatalytic water splitting with transition metal catalysts, which would in principle produce H2 and O2, which could then be used directly for the generation of energy, appears to be a promising approach. However, mechanistic investigations of such reactions are still insufficient.2
Major aspects of our research are the investigation of organometallic elemental reactions of transition metal complexes (especially Ti, Zr, Hf) with water and the study of the role of the formed species in (photo)catalytic water splitting.3 Moreover, the development and testing of new homogeneous and heterogeneous multi-component systems for photocatalytic water splitting plays an important role in our group.4
Additionally, we are working on the early-transition-metal-catalyzed release of hydrogen from amine borane adducts, which are potential candidates for efficient hydrogen storage (ideally up to 19.6 wt% H2 in H3N·BH3).5
For these studies we are equipped with three volumetric systems (two automatic gas burets and one manually operated gas buret, each with 300W Xe arc lamp) and a permanent gas GC for the analysis of gases.
[1] | N. S. Lewis, D. G. Nocera, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 2006, 103, 15729. |
[2] | O. Ozerov, Chem. Soc. Rev. 2009, 38, 83 |
[3] | a) M. Kessler, S. Hansen, D. Hollmann, M. Klahn, T. Beweries, A. Spannenberg, A. Brückner, U. Rosenthal, Eur. J. Inorg. Chem. 2011, 627. b) M. Kessler, S. Schüler, D. Hollmann, M. Klahn, T. Beweries, A. Spannenberg, A. Brückner, U. Rosenthal, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2012, 51, 6272. |
[4] | S. Hansen, M. Klahn, T. Beweries, U. Rosenthal, ChemSusChem 2012, 5, 656. |
[5] | a) T. Beweries, S. Hansen, M. Kessler, M. Klahn, U. Rosenthal, Dalton Trans. 2011, 40, 7689. b) T. Beweries, J. Thomas, M. Klahn, A. Schulz, D. Heller, U. Rosenthal, ChemCatChem 2011, 3, 1865. |
