A biomimetic nanoreactor combines cellular design principles to produce hydrogen peroxide efficiently under visible light.

Inside a hollow nanoscale structure, researchers have recreated two strategies that living cells use to control chemical reactions. The resulting CdS@polydopamine nanoreactor offers a synthetic way to reproduce some of the organization and efficiency found in biological systems.

The work was published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Can Li of the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP), part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), led the research with Jian Liu’s group at Inner Mongolia University.