Leveraging the iron-breathing bacterium Geobacter sulfurreducens, MAPTech researchers in Prof Pascal Saikaly's team have bio-grown size-controlled palladium nanoclusters that surpass platinum and iridium benchmarks for water-splitting, offering a greener, low-cost route to high-performance catalysts.
“A catalyst synthesized with a biological method is not only cheaper and simpler but also greener,” notes Ph.D. student Rodrigo Jimenez-Sandoval.
By drip-feeding the metal precursor, the team tuned cluster size to <100 atoms and anchored them onto the bacterial surface, turning the microbe into both reducing agent and conductive scaffold. Work is now shifting to earth-abundant metals to boost sustainability even further.