Bio-inspired Cobalt Catalyst Enables Natural-Sunlight-Driven Hydrogen Production from Aerobic Neutral Aqueous Solution

Hetero-axial cobalt complexes are known for their oxygen-tolerant photocatalytic H<inf>2</inf> production activity, although typically only in organic solvents. Here, Dolui et al. incorporate an enzyme-inspired synthetic outer coordination sphere around a molecular cobalt complex and demonstrate it to be capable of producing H<inf>2</inf> from neutral, aerobic aqueous solution under natural solar irradiation—one of the first examples of homogeneous molecular electrocatalysts that can effectively store solar energy in the H-H bond under benchtop conditions.