PhD defence

Ruthenium- and cobalt-based artificial metalloenzymes for photocatalytic water oxidation in artificial photosynthesis

• E.A. Polanco Rivas

Date

Wednesday 7 June 2023

Time

10:00 - 10:45

Location

Academy Building
Rapenburg 73
2311 GJ Leiden

Supervisor(s)

• Prof⁠.dr⁠. S⁠. Bonnet
• dr. A⁠. Pandit

Summary

Producing green energy has become the main goal in our society in the search of reducing or eliminating the carbon emission from fossil fuels. In this project, I used proteins as a tool to develop an artificial system capable of promoting the most demanding reaction in photosynthesis, water oxidation, as a new concept of producing energy from a green source. For this purpose, a screening study of the interaction between selected proteins and a library of photocatalytic ruthenium and cobalt complexes was carried out. The results from such study allowed the production of two types of artificial metalloenzymes (ArM) which were proven to be able to perform water oxidation reaction via blue light irradiation. These findings lead to develop ruthenium and cobalt metalloenzymes as promising candidates for artificial photosynthesis in bio-inspired systems.

PhD dissertations

Approximately one week after the defence, PhD dissertations by Leiden PhD students are available digitally through the Leiden Repository, that offers free access to these PhD dissertations. Please note that in some cases a dissertation may be under embargo temporarily and access to its full-text version will only be granted later.

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