Proceedings of nanoGe Fall Meeting19 (NFM19)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.29363/nanoge.nfm.2019.122
Publication date: 18th July 2019
In a world that is running out of natural resources, there is a growing need to design and develop sustainable and green energy resources. In that respect, photo-electrocatalytically driven reactions for the production of alternative fuels (such as CO2 reduction) hold the potential to provide a route for future carbon neutral energy economy. Nevertheless, the slow kinetics of those catalytic reactions demands the development of efficient catalysts in order to drive it at lower overpotentials. Indeed, a variety of molecular catalysts based on metal complexes are capable of electrochemically reducing CO2. Yet, despite the significant progress in this field, practical realization of molecular catalysts will have to involve a simple and robust way to assemble high concentration of these catalysts in an ordered, reactant-accessible fashion onto a conductive electrode.
In this talk, I will present our recent proof-of-principle study on electrocatalytic CO2 reduction activity of MOFs incorporating molecular catalysts such as Fe-tetraphenylporphyrin and Mn(bpy)(CO)3Br. Our group utilizes Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs) as a platform for heterogenizing molecular electrocatalysts. Their unique properties (porosity and flexible chemical functionality), enables us to use MOFs for integrating all the different functional elements needed for efficient catalysts: 1) immobilization of molecular catalysts, 2) electron transport elements, 3) mass transport channels, and 4) modulation of catalyst secondary environment. Thus, in essence, MOFs could possess all of the functional ingredients of a catalytic enzyme.