There has been great interest in the development of stable, inexpensive, efficient catalysts capable of reducing aqueous protons to hydrogen (H2), an alternative to fossil fuels. While synthetic H2 evolution catalysts have been in development for decades, recently there has been great progress in engineering biomolecular catalysts and assemblies of synthetic catalysts and biomolecules. In this Forum Article, progress in engineering proteins to catalyze H2 evolution from water is discussed. The artificial enzymes described include assemblies of synthetic catalysts and photosynthetic proteins, proteins with cofactors replaced with synthetic catalysts, and derivatives of electron-transfer proteins. In addition, a new catalyst consisting of a thermophilic cobalt-substituted cytochrome c is reported. As an electrocatalyst, the cobalt cytochrome shows nearly quantitative Faradaic efficiency and excellent longevity with a turnover number of >270000.

No abstract

No abstract

Using a capacitive photocurrent measurement technique, we demonstrate the ability of both semiconducting and metallic single wall nanotubes to function as photodetectors over a wide spectral range. We observe clear peaks in the photo induced displacement current of a nanotube-plated capacitor that correspond directly to the semiconducting and metallic transitions in the nanotube absorbance spectrum. The signal increases substantially as the carrier drift velocity is raised with applied bias. A large increase in the photocurrent observed below temperatures of 100 K suggests that the nanotube hot carrier relaxation rate decreases substantially at low temperatures.

No abstract