Converting biomass to biofuels requires biologically-inspired inorganic catalysts that will convert plant sugars into combustible fuels. Christopher Marshall, who leads the Institute for Atom-Efficient Chemical Transformations (IACT) at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, said, “There’s a real challenge in the catalysis and conversion process that we face, which is that nature and evolution have already fashioned far better catalysts than we could create on our own—namely enzymes. In order to aid the transition away from a petroleum-based economy, we have to take our cues from the catalysts that have existed for millions of years.” Actually using biological enzymes is not a workable solution as these enzymes work too slowly to be effective. Potential catalysts for biofuel production include precious metals and their elemental cousins, but the conversion of biomass to biofuels requires the use of a great deal of hydrogen, and, says Marshall, “The current methods of getting the hydrogen we need to do the conversion require the input of just as much energy as we’d get out of the fuels we’d be trying to create. In order to really get biofuels to take off, we first have to tackle the problem of where we’re going to get all the hydrogen we need.” Scientists hope to find a self-sustaining process in which the hydrogen needed for conversion can be extracted from the biomass itself. The ability to do so will require the development of robust inorganic materials based on nanotechnology that can improve the process of going from woodchipper to gas tank. “By combining all of these approaches, we hope to gain an understanding of how these key reactions work and how we can optimize the effectiveness of these catalysts both in terms of their selectivity and their rate of reaction. We want to use these catalysts as scalpels, not chainsaws,” Marshall said.