Researchers at the University of Arizona have developed a breakthrough method to extract hydrogen from water via electrolysis using cost-efficient, earth-abundant materials. They were inspired in their discovery by natural enzymes that produce hydrogen rapidly under mild ambient conditions using iron and sulfur, two of the most abundant elements on Earth. Electrolysis is simple and "clean," but today electrolysis of water typically relies on platinum, a rare and expensive catalyst that makes large-scale manufacturing cost prohibitive. The University of Arizona team has discovered how to mimic the ability of enzymes to use iron and sulfur to produce hydrogen. By moving electrons at lower energy levels to reconfigure chemical compositions with their “artificial enzyme”, this method remains as clean and energy efficient as traditional electrolysis but at a fraction of the cost. The results are high-performance; the prototype cell creates 250,000 molecules of hydrogen per catalyst site per second, outperforming natural enzymes by 25x.