Descrizione del progetto
Ottimizzare i compositi a livelli inferiori di CO2 nell’atmosfera pur soddisfacendo la domanda energetica
La riduzione fotocatalitica di CO2 volta a ottenere combustibili solari sostenibili rappresenta una sfida per affrontare sia le questioni energetiche che ambientali. Molti fotocatalizzatori, tra cui i semiconduttori inorganici e i nanomateriali bidimensionali, rappresentano potenziali candidati per la fotoriduzione di CO2, sebbene siano ancora molto lontani dall’applicazione pratica a causa di numerosi inconvenienti. Per rispondere alla domanda di fotocatalizzatori ad alte prestazioni, il progetto PhotoCatRed svilupperà compositi multinari a eterostruttura a base di grafene N-drogati che fungano da fotocatalizzatori forti ed estremamente efficienti per una riduzione di CO2 tramite luce visibile. I compositi a eterostruttura saranno appositamente progettati per affrontare le principali sfide odierne e potrebbero rivelarsi fotocatalizzatori molto utili nella riduzione di CO2 sotto irradiazione di luce visibile.
Obiettivo
Energy shortage and environment pollution are two critical threats faced by the present society. Carbon dioxide (CO2), the well known greenhouse gas is a major cause of global warming but at same time it is also an abundant resource for hydrocarbon energy fuels. Photocatalytic CO2 reduction (PCO2R) into sustainable solar fuels is a highly enticing challenge for simultaneous settling of energy and environmental issues. So far, manifold photocatalysts including inorganic semiconductors, noble metal complexes, metal organic frameworks, 2D nanomaterials etc. have been demonstrated potential candidates for CO2 photo reduction. But the overall catalytic performance of the state of art materials is still far from practical application due to one or combined problems of low conversion efficiency, poor light harvesting, low stability, high electron-hole recombination rates, high cost and lack of product selectivity. Thus there is a steady demand for high performance photocatalysts preferably multinary heterostructure designs that can compensate for the shortcomings of the single components. The PCO2R project aims to develop novel multinary N-doped graphene based heterostructure composites decorated with titanium dioxide semiconductor, gold-copper bimetallic nanoalloys and/or transition metal dichalcogenides-copper nanoparticles as robust high efficiency photocatalysts for visible light reduction of CO2. The heterostructure composite is custom designed to overcome the major existing challenges and is anticipated to have great potential as a practically useful photocatalyst that can reduce CO2 under irradiation of visible light along with high product selectivity. The PCO2R project will confer significant scientific advances in the field of materials design, synthesis and catalysis strategies in addition to the knowledge transfer, training activities and long run societal interests.
Campo scientifico
- natural scienceschemical sciencescatalysisphotocatalysis
- engineering and technologynanotechnologynano-materialstwo-dimensional nanostructuresgraphene
- engineering and technologymaterials engineeringcomposites
- natural sciencesphysical scienceselectromagnetism and electronicssemiconductivity
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringenergy and fuels
Programma(i)
Argomento(i)
Meccanismo di finanziamento
MSCA-IF-EF-ST - Standard EFCoordinatore
1000 Ljubljana
Slovenia