Finding an active, inexpensive, stable catalyst for the hydrogen evolution reaction half of water splitting is extremely challenging. For decades Platinum has been the gold standard in such materials but its expense makes widespread application difficult. One promising way to address this limitation is so-called single atom catalysis in which electrodes composed of Pt atoms bound to organic ligands are employed that retain or have enhanced catalytic activity relative to bulk Pt with a fraction of the required mass. In a very nice piece of work driven by Yujin, Can (a visiting student with us last year) and collaborators from Fudan University, the Harbin Institute of Technology, Wuhan University and the University of Science and Technology of China demonstrated a straightforward photochemical reduction method for generating such catalysts with a polyvinylpyrrolidone ligand. See their paper in Angewandte Chemie for more…