Catalysis lies at the heart of modern industrial chemistry. It enables the production of more than 85% of chemical goods essential to our daily life, from plastics and pharmaceutical products to fertilisers, and contributes to trillions of euros in annual revenue. Yet, the chemical processes behind these products remain highly energy-intensive. They often require extreme operating conditions (pressures over 100 atm, temperatures above 400 °C), and are typically fed by fossil fuel combustion. As a result, the chemical industry is one of the world’s largest energy consumers (~2.5% of global use), and emits close to 1.5% of global greenhouse gases (around one gigaton per year). Greening, intensifying and enhancing selectivity of these large-scale processes by powering them under milder conditions is a critical challenge for climate neutrality and industrial sustainability.
One promising way towards this urgent transformation is plasmonic photocatalysis, an emerging approach that uses light and metallic nanostructures to drive chemical reactions. These nanoscale, ‘plasmonic’, materials concentrate light into extremely small volumes, offering a local environment where reactions can proceed by light excitations at pressures and temperatures far below those that typify traditional reactors. By modifying how energy is delivered to the reaction sites, they can change rates and open new, otherwise inaccessible reactivity channels.
Despite exceptional promise, current plasmonic photocatalysis methods face two major limitations: the inability to control the spatial arrangement of nanostructures, and the use of continuous-wave illumination, which restricts the operation regime to the steady-state.
In this context, the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action PATHWAYS seeks to enable a paradigm shift in catalysis by introducing a new class of photocatalysts with tailored properties in space and time, driven by ultrashort light pulses to unlock reaction pathways that offer superior efficiency and selectivity.
The core objective of the project is to introduce new theoretical approaches that can predict how pulsed light excitation of engineered metal nanostructures influences reaction rates, selectivity, and energy use. To achieve this, the project is developing new multi-scale, multiphysics models that describe energy flows through nanostructured catalysts – from light absorption, to hot carrier generation, to energy transfer and reaction activation on the metal surface. These models are intended to guide experiments and set the foundation for data-driven design of photocatalysts, exploring how tailored ultrafast optical pulses can improve reaction outcomes beyond what is possible with traditional continuous-wave illumination. Beyond the immediate scope and duration of the project, the long-term vision of PATHWYAS includes scientific, technological, and societal impact, stemming from the development of new photocatalytic platforms offering sustainable, cost- and energy-effective alternatives to traditional approaches.
