Nowadays, more than 180 million tons of ammonia are produced annually from N2 world-wide based on the Haber-Bosch process, and the rapid growth of the world’s population would not have been possible without this industrial “artificial N2 conversion”. Downsides of this technology are however the high energy demand, the large CO2 emissions associated to this process (for 1 ton of ammonia 20-40 GJ are required, and 1.5 tons of CO2 are produced) and the need of large centralized production sites, impeding decentralization. In view of the increasing CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, and the development of alternative concepts for the activation of small molecules, more sustainable approaches for artificial N2 conversion are in demand. This symposium invites contributions on new challenges in the field of photocatalytic, photoelectrochemical and electrochemical dinitrogen conversion using heterogeneous catalysts. This can include reduction reactions towards ammonia or oxidation towards e.g. nitrate. The symposium will further consider contributions on nitrate reduction, nitrogenase applications, and incorporation of dinitrogen into organic molecules. Related to this topic are new catalyst developments, new reactor and reaction engineering concepts, and novel theoretical insights. This symposium will be organized by the German DFG Priority Program SPP2370.
- Heterogeneous photocatalytic dinitrogen conversion
- Heterogeneous electrocatalytic dinitrogen conversion
- Reactor concepts for heterogeneous dinitrogen reduction and oxidation
- Nitrate reduction
Dr. Roland Marschall obtained his PhD in Physical Chemistry from the Leibniz University Hannover in 2008, working on mesoporous materials for fuel cell applications. After a one year postdoctoral research at the University of Queensland in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Functional Nanomaterials, he joined in 2010 the Fraunhofer Institute for Silicate Research ISC as project leader. In 2011, he joined the Industrial Chemistry Laboratory at Ruhr-University Bochum as young researcher. From 07/2013 to 08/2018, he was Emmy-Noether Young Investigator at the Justus-Liebig-University Giessen. Since 08/2018, he is Full Professor at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. His current research interests are heterogeneous photocatalysis, especially photocatalytic water splitting and nitrogen reduction using semiconductor mixed oxides, and synthesis of oxidic mesostructured materials for energy applications.
Victor Mougel completed his Bachelor's and Master's degree in Chemistry at the ENS of Lyon, and obtained his PhD at the University of Grenoble under the supervision of Prof. Marinella Mazzanti. He then joined ETH Zürich as an ETH/Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow before starting his independent career as a CNRS associate researcher at Collège de France in 2016. Since December 2018, he is a tenure track assistant professor at the Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences at ETH Zürich.
Ifan is a Professor in Electrochemistry at the Department of Materials at Imperial College: he leads the Interfacial Electrochemistry Group there and is also Atoms to Devices Research Area Lead at the Henry Royce Institute.
Ifan joined Imperial College in July 2017. Prior to Imperial, he was at the Department of Physics at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU); he was first employed as a postdoctoral researcher, then as assistant professor and finally as associate professor and leader of the Electrocatalysis Group there. In 2015, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) appointed Ifan as the Peabody Visiting Associate Professor. He taught and conducted research at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT for a whole semester.
Ifan’s research aims to enable the large-scale electrochemical conversion of renewable energy to fuels and valuable chemicals and vice versa. Such processes will be critical in order to allow the increased uptake of renewable energy. His focus is on the catalyst at the electrode, i.e. the electrocatalyst. It turns out that the electrocatalyst material defines the efficiency of several important electrochemical processes, including:(i) electrolysis for the storage of renewable electricity — which is inherently intermittent — in the form of fuels, such as hydrogen or alcohols.(ii) fuel cells as a potentially zero emission source of power for automotive vehicles. (iii) the green synthesis of valuable chemicals, such as ammonia and H2O2. (iv) batteries, which tend to degrade by gas evolution at the electrode-electrolyte interface. Hence the reactions that need to be accelerated in electrolysers and fuel cells — such as CO2, CO, O2 and H2 evolution — are precisely those that need to be inhibited in batteries.
Ifan has discovered or co-discovered several new catalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction, which exhibited significant improvements in performance over the prior state-of-the-art. In particular, his research on hydrogen peroxide production led to the establishment of the spinout company, HP Now.
Ifan is the recipient of RSC's Geoffrey Barker Medal (2024), the RSC's John Jeyes Award (2021). He also currently holds an European Resarch Council Consolidator Grant (2021-2025). Since 2022, he has been a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher.