CAREER: CO2 Reduction byWell-Defined Multimetallic Architectures with Earth-Abundant Metals

With this CAREER Award, the Chemical Synthesis Program of the NSF Division of Chemistry is supporting the research of Professor Manar Shoshani and his students who will explore new methods to convert carbon dioxide selectively to more valuable products such as formic acid, methanol, and oxalic acid under mild conditions. While carbon dioxide can be converted to other materials the processes to do this usually suffers from lack of selectivity and lead to mixtures of various products.

This research will use new and well-defined complexes, featuring multiple metals centers that are abundant on Earth, and work cooperatively in carbon dioxide reactivity. Deliberate access to varying carbon dioxide reduction products, directly from carbon dioxide, has been a long-standing challenge in sustainable sciences. Professor Shoshani has collaborated with a local community college, Johnson County Community College (JCCC), in the Kansas area.

Prof. Shoshani will host students from JCCC to work in the research lab for summer-semester internships.

This research leverages single component and Earth-abundant multimetallic architectures in the cooperative reduction of carbon dioxide to value-added products. Current challenges in deliberate access to a variety of CO2 reduction products on well-defined platforms will be addressed by utilizing Lewis-acidic or Lewis- basic design elements within well-defined scaffolds to direct selectivity and reactivity.

Single-component Ni-Lewis acid complexes will be utilized to access distinct reduction pathways and provide insights through structure-function studies to uncover design elements needed to access modular and selective carbon dioxide reduction. Multimetallic Ni-Lewis base complexes will be leveraged for new methodology in carbon dioxide reduction by incorporating metal-metal cooperativity as well as Lewis-basic nitrenoids equipped to regulate proton and electron flux within a single molecular system.

Cumulatively, this work represents new strategies in the controlled access of varying carbon dioxide reduction products through the incorporation of underexplored and traditionally challenging design elements in well-defined molecular motifs. This research provides a rich training opportunity for a new generation of chemists and the outreach initiatives engage students at the K-12 and post-secondary level.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.