University of California, Berkeley, chemists are reimagining
catalysts in ways that could have a profound impact on the
chemical industry as well as on the growing market for hydrogen
fuel cell vehicles. Catalysts are materials typically metals
that speed up chemical reactions and are widely used in the
synthesis of chemicals and drugs. They also are employed in
automobile catalytic converters to change combustion chemicals
into less-polluting emissions and in fuel cells to convert water
into hydrogen. The problem with catalysts, however, is that
chemical reactions occur only at edges of or defects in the
material, while the bulk of the metal – often expensive platinum
– is inactive and wasted. In an article appearing this week in
the journal Science, UC Berkeley chemists show how to construct
a catalyst composed only of edges and demonstrate that it can
catalyze the production of hydrogen from water as readily as the
edges and defects in regular catalysts. "This is a conceptual
advance in the way we think ab