The fundamental chemistry of photosynthetic water oxidation is a important question in its own scientific right. Clearly molecular oxygen is critical for most of the life on the planet. However, the chemistry of water oxidation is also important from a catalytic sense. The earth faces certain climatic consequences associated with looming increases of CO₂ into the atmosphere. These increases are arising from the burning fossil fuels. They are clearly documented and a renewable carbon neutral solution is urgently needed derived from a renewable fuels. The long term solution is a hydrogen economy. The generation of hydrogen from renewable sources (water) will need a catalytic counterpart in the form of a catalyst for water oxidation: An electrochemical cell that generated hydrogen on one side of the electrode and molecular oxygen on the other half.

In this regard PSII provides a remarkable paradigm. The reaction is thermodynamically efficient (spectacularly so) and the reaction operating with low driving force and low overpotential. The reaction is also catalysed using a transition metal (Manganese) that is not particularly hard to come by. In contrast redox chemistry can be performed with Platinum electrodes. However, these are expensive due to the commodity price of platinum. (Platinum Commodity Prices) (10+ Price Trends). An platinum electrodes are not tremendously efficient in the redox chemistry. In this regard nature has many useful secrets to learn, and these secrets provide extremely useful paradigms to build on. Nature after all has had 2.7 billion years to work on water oxidation chemistry..

Note: the following movies require Flash plug-in from Macromedia and will possibly take a moment to stream (patience please) and the movies can be downloaded below (WMV best quality).