Project description
Catalysing a change in artificial photosynthesis
As the world seeks sustainable ways to meet rising energy demands to fuel a growing global economy, biomimetic artificial photosynthesis presents a promising opportunity. Plants and other organisms transform light energy into chemical energy via the conversion of water, CO2 and minerals into oxygen and energy-rich organic compounds. Photoelectrochemical devices can play an important role in carbon-neutral solar fuel production through artificial photosynthesis. Conjugated porous polymers (CPPs) are a promising class of photocatalysts with structural durability, non-toxicity and low cost. The EU-funded NanoCPPs project is developing a novel synthetic process for nanoparticles based on CPPs to be used in thin films, which overcomes current obstacles and enables the fine-tuning and control of CPP properties. The project plans to pave the way for commercialisation with a knowledge transfer plan.
Objective
The world energy demand is continuously growing due to the increase of population. This has triggered the need of new technologies that allow the sustainability of the planet. In this sense, the search of novel materials that can be introduced in these new technological approaches is mandatory.
In NanoCPPs project, the design, synthesis and scale up of nanoparticles based on Conjugated Porous Polymers (CPPs) will be performed. Advanced techniques will be applied to obtain processable CPPs as colloidal solutions in the multi-gram scale as precursors to prepare thin films. These conductive polymer thin films will be used in photoelectrochemical devices for artificial photosynthesis processes, including hydrogen production from water and CO2 reduction. NanoCPPs will address the two main drawbacks inherent to the CPPs synthetic process currently used. Firstly, the particle size control will be improved, which allows to tune the photo(electro)physical properties, in the same way as it happens with nanoparticles based on inorganic semiconductors. Secondly, NanoCPPs will also advance towards the formulation of optimum colloidal solutions of nanostructured CPPs that offers new opportunities to their processability, which is an outstanding issue for this kind of materials.
The knowledge transfer plan will be based on a vendor IP strategy, in which target companies will be preferentially those dedicated to polymers manufacturing for advance applications and those dedicated to electrodes production at large scale. With this aim, a market and IP assessment as well as a pre-technology study will be performed in order to transfer NanoCPPs new technology to the market”.
Fields of science
- natural scienceschemical sciencespolymer sciences
- engineering and technologymaterials engineeringcoating and films
- engineering and technologynanotechnologynano-materials
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringenergy and fuelsrenewable energyhydrogen energy
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesbotany
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
ERC-POC-LS - ERC Proof of Concept Lump Sum PilotHost institution
28935 Mostoles Madrid
Spain