Modeling enzyme function at surfaces

The high chemical reactivity of unsaturated metal sites is a key factor for the development of novel devices with applications in sensor engineering and catalysis. Open metal sites in nanostructured coordination compounds are also central in the research for sustainable energy concepts, e.g., the efficient and sustainable production and conversion of chemical fuels. Coordinatively unsaturated metal ions also play a key role in several biological processes, e.g., dinuclear metal centers are a common structural feature in the cofactor of many metalloproteins controlling respiration or metabolism. Several of these fundamental units are based on carboxylate-bridged Fe ions that catalyze the dissociation of molecular oxygen allowing the participation of oxygen into a large variety of chemical reactions controlling important processes such as the oxidation of methane to methanol, the conversion of nucleotides to deoxynucleotides, or the conversion of alkanes to alkenes. The structural characterization of these carboxylate-bridged iron units has been the subject of extensive work, and even more efforts have been dedicated to the understanding of their reaction mechanisms, a formidable challenge due to the complexity of the biological environment.