A molecular pendulum, swinging 10,000 times a second, is how nature makes hydrogen so fast

Some microbes make hydrogen — a clean fuel — with an ease chemists envy: a single one of their enzymes can grab nearly 10,000 protons (the building blocks of hydrogen) every second. At Ruhr University Bochum in Germany, Dr Jifu Duan, Professor Thomas Happe and colleagues have finally seen how. Inside the enzyme, a tiny molecular part swings like a pendulum: out to the surface to collect a proton, back inside to deliver it. Block that swing with a speck of zinc, and production crawls; leave it free, and the enzyme flies. The finding, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, is a blueprint — if we can copy nature's pendulum, we can build better catalysts for making hydrogen without fossil fuels.

SDG 9 · Industry, innovation and infrastructure — Mechanism: tech innovation