Lessons from nature inspire breakthrough in catalyzing electricity from renewable energy

Efficiently releasing stored chemical energy harnessed from renewable sources remains one of the great scientific challenges facing the catalysis research community. Meanwhile, Mother Nature performs this transformation with ease using abundant metal-containing enzymes as catalysts. So far, lack of an inexpensive and stable catalyst has limited widespread, economical use of hydrogen fuel cells (HFCs). But thanks to a recent breakthrough at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), that may c