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The paper of Prof. OGO was published in " Science" which is the academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is one of the world's top scientific journals.
Scientists at Kyushu University (President, Setsuo Arikawa), Japan, have invented a new catalyst that can release electrons from hydrogen gas. The catalyst is a molecule that relies on cheap iron and nickel and works at room temperature and atmospheric pressure. This development is a crucial step in replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy sources. The catalyst was developed by a research collaboration led by Professor Seiji Ogo of the I2CNER (International Institute for Carbon-Neutral Energy Research) (Director, Petros Sofronis) at Kyushu University. The I2CNER is itself a core facility of the WPI (World Premier International Research Center Initiative) established by the MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology).
The catalyst's structure was inspired by natural enzymes called nickel-iron hydrogenases. Chemists have been trying to understand how they work for decades. The first breakthrough came in 2007, when Ogo and coworkers first managed to copy the working of hydrogenases using a nickel-ruthenium molecular catalyst — though ruthenium was more expensive than iron, it pointed the way to a revolution in molecular catalysts for hydrogen splitting. The substitution of iron for ruthenium not only makes the new catalyst four thousand times cheaper, it also forms a crucial model for explaining how some bacteria and algae can harness energy from hydrogen so efficiently. The future development of this catalyst will not only make energy generation cheaper, it will also provide chemists with a whole new way to control reactions that use hydrogen molecules as an important building block. ≫
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