Today it is clear that mankind’s use of fossil fuel can not continue. It is an ending resource that should be used in more useful ways than to be burned as fuel. Instead, we should turn to renewable energy sources, and why not use the sun? Why not mimic nature and use sun and water, as Photosystem II in green plants, to produce tomorrow’s fuels?
In green plants, reducing equivalents is taken from water to produce biomass. This water oxidation is the key reaction to understand and master the necessary processes to build an artificial system that instead of biomass, produce a chemical fuel. Here we present a systematic study were we for the first time compares different synthetic manganese complexes towards water oxidation under the same condition. With the help of Membrane Inlet Mass Spectrometry (MIMS) we have been able to track the oxygen atoms in the released oxygen and identified different mechanistical behavior depending on the nature of the manganese catalyst or the oxidant used.