Researchers at MIT, Prof. Daniel Nocera and Dr. Matthew Kanan, have developed a new water-splitting catalyst consisting of cobalt and phosphorous that operates in pH neutral water at room temperature and 1 atm pressure. A report on their discovery was published online 31 July 2008 in the journal Science. The cobalt-phosphorous catalyst targets the generation of oxygen gas from water-the more complex of the two water-splitting half-cell reactions required (H2O/O2 and H2O/H2). Another catalyst generates the hydrogen. Although MIT acknowledged that more research is needed, the new catalyst opens a very promising pathway for the development of systems that use artificial photosynthesis to store solar energy on a large scale in the form of O2 and H2 for subsequent use in a fuel cell.