Bioinspired bimetallic catalysts for CO2 reduction beyond C1 products

The utilisation of CO2 as a chemical feedstock is a promising strategy for breaking the dependence of the chemical industry on oil and gas.

To do this, it is necessary to go beyond the reduction of CO2 to one-carbon products such as carbon monoxide, and advance to multi-carbon ‘C2+ products’ including ethylene, ethanol and oxalate.

These higher value chemicals are essential in materials manufacturing and fine chemical synthesis but are challenging to form, due to a difficult C–C coupling step which is not well understood in the state-of-the-art catalysts currently available.

Inspired by the binuclear enzyme active sites found in nature, this project’s novel approach is to harness the cooperative reactivity of two metal sites, using molecular bimetallic electrocatalysts to promote C2+ product formation.

Through a combination of electrochemistry, theory and complementary spectroscopic techniques, the poorly understood mechanisms of C–C bond formation will be elucidated at well defined molecular metal centres. The outcome of this project will be greater understanding of the pathways to C2+ products at two sites.

This will lead to the future development of efficient catalysts for the electrochemical reduction of CO2 to valuable chemical feedstocks.

The applicant brings a background in the synthetic inorganic chemistry of bimetallic complexes, and will receive world-class training from the hosts, who are experts in molecular electrochemistry and spectroscopy.