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Mar 20, 2023

Electroactive bacterium generates well-defined nanosized metal catalysts with remarkable water-splitting performance

Posted by in categories: biological, chemistry, nanotechnology, particle physics, sustainability

A biological method that produces metal nanoclusters using the electroactive bacterium Geobacter sulfurreducens could provide a cheap and sustainable solution to high-performance catalyst synthesis for various applications such as water splitting.

Metal nanoclusters contain fewer than one hundred atoms and are much smaller than nanoparticles. They have unique electronic properties but also feature numerous active sites available for catalysis on their surface. There are several synthetic methods for making nanoclusters, but most require multiple steps involving and harsh temperature and pressure conditions.

Biological methods are expected to deliver ecofriendly alternatives to conventional chemical synthesis. Yet, to date, they have only led to large nanoparticles in a wide range of sizes. “We found a way to control the size of the nanoclusters,” says Rodrigo Jimenez-Sandoval, a Ph.D. candidate in Pascal Saikaly’s group at KAUST.

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