Lecture 'Meet the PhD Jury: Electrochemical reduction of CO2 by molecular macrocycles: spectroscopic and mechanistic studies'

For whom
Employees , Students
When
04-12-2024 from 10:00 to 12:30
Where
Campus Ardoyen, Technologiepark 125, 9052 Yves Chauvin
Language
English
Organizer
Department of Materials, Textiles and Chemical Engineering - Faculty of Engineering and Architecture
Contact
paulien.baeyens@ugent.be

The electrochemical reduction of CO2 is a valuable strategy to convert this gas into value-added, carbon-containing chemicals.

The electrocatalytic reduction of CO2 suffers from one major drawback: the selectivity towards a given product. Decades of research on catalyst development have only been able to achieve high selectivity towards carbon monoxide (CO) or formic acid (HCOOH).

Amongst catalysts, transition metal macrocycles have emerged as efficient catalysts for the electroreduction of CO2 into CO. Importantly, they can only reduce CO2 into C1 products such as CO or, to a lower extent, methanol.

The formation of C2+ products upon electroreduction of CO2 have only been observed, up to now, for copper catalysts.