Molecular Catalyst Immobilized into Porous Photocathode for production of Solar fuel

Objective

The biggest contributor to ‘global warming’ is CO2 emission by burning fossil fuels. It is feasible to achieve carbon neutrality by recycling CO2 to fuels, which has a negative carbon footprint. It is not economical to recycle CO2 under the traditional circumstances, which involve extreme conditions. (Photo)-electrocatalytic CO2 reduction using thin-film semiconductor at room temperature is promising. For CO2 reduction, molecular catalysts are beneficial, because of easy structure-function correlations, but they lack recyclability and durability. CO2 reduction catalysts will be produced by the EU-funded MolPPS project through heterogenization of molecular catalysts in porous matrix with 3D crystalline architecture. Due to heterogenization, the proposed catalyst will possess inherent activity and gain stability. MolPPS will help elucidate the principles leading to heterogeneous molecular catalyst designing.

This proposal will implement two distinct heterogenization methods for iron/tin porphyrins containing carboxylic acids and hydroxyl groups into porous covalent organic framework. Porphyrins are well-known CO2 reduction catalysts. The microenvironment around porphyrins will be tweaked to tune the (photo-)electrocatalysis to produce methane and formic acid, drawing inspiration from the effects of extended coordination spheres and proton management commonly exploited by the biological enzymes. Electrochemical theories will be expanded to decipher mechanistic information, and develop catalytic models. Working for MolPPS will aid the experienced researcher achieving his goals for an independent research career by: (1) scientific training in organic synthesis and catalysis, (2) mentorship training via supervision of PhD students, (3) fund management training, and (4) develop long-lasting collaborations.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.

• natural sciences chemical sciences catalysis electrocatalysis
• natural sciences chemical sciences inorganic chemistry post-transition metals
• natural sciences chemical sciences organic chemistry aliphatic compounds
• engineering and technology environmental engineering energy and fuels
• natural sciences biological sciences biochemistry biomolecules proteins enzymes

Keywords

Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)

• Catalysis
• Coordination chemistry
• Electrochemistry
• Molecular chemistry
• Heterogeneous catalysis
• Porous materials
• Photocatalysis
• Structural properties of materials
• Supramolecular chemistry

Coordinator