Energy has been a central subject for human development from Homo erectus to date. The massive use of fossil fuels during the last 50 years has generated a large CO₂ concentration in the atmosphere that has led to the so-called global warming. It is very urgent to come up with C-neutral energy schemes to be able to preserve Planet Earth for future generations to come and still preserve our modern societies' life style. One of the potential solutions is water splitting with sunlight (hν-WS) that is also associated with “artificial photosynthesis”, since its working mode consists of light capture followed by water oxidation and proton reduction processes. The hydrogen fuel generated in this way is named as “solar fuel”. For this set of reactions, the catalytic oxidation of water to dioxygen is one of the crucial processes that need to be understood and mastered in order to build up potential devices based on hν-WS. This tutorial describes the different important aspects that need to be considered to come up with efficient and oxidatively robust molecular water oxidation catalysts (Mol-WOCs). It is based on our own previous work and completed with essential contributions from other active groups in the field. We mainly aim at describing how the ligands can influence the properties of the Mol-WOCs and showing a few key examples that overall provide a complete view of today's understanding in this field.

中文翻译：

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如何制造高效，坚固的水氧化分子催化剂

从直立人到现在，能源一直是人类发展的中心课题。在过去的50年中，化石燃料的大量使用已在大气中产生大量的CO ₂浓度，从而导致了所谓的全球变暖。迫切需要提出一种碳中和的能源计划，以保护地球，以供子孙后代使用，同时仍然保持我们现代社会的生活方式。潜在的解决方案之一是在阳光下分解水（hν-WS）也与“人工光合作用”相关，因为其工作模式包括光捕获，水氧化和质子还原过程。以这种方式产生的氢燃料被称为“太阳能”。对于这组反应，水的催化氧化为双氧是必须理解和掌握的关键过程之一，以建立基于hν的潜在装置-WS。本教程介绍了有效和抗氧化的分子水氧化催化剂（Mol-WOC）所需要考虑的不同重要方面。它是基于我们自己以前的工作，并由该领域其他活跃团体做出的重要贡献而完成的。我们的主要目的是描述配体如何影响Mol-WOC的性能，并展示一些关键实例，这些实例为我们对该领域的当今理解提供了完整的了解。