Publication date: 22nd July 2026
While major strides have been made in deploying and scaling technologies for renewable electricity generation, this represents only half of what is required to build a truly sustainable economy. The remaining bottleneck lies in establishing renewable feedstocks and developing sustainable pathways to produce petrochemical analogues, which continue to be the critical missing link for decarbonising materials and chemical manufacturing. Lignin, one of the principal constituents of lignocellulosic biomass, is the largest renewable reservoir of aromatic carbon in nature; thus, enabling routes to selectively depolymerize it could unlock access to a broad portfolio of petrochemical‑relevant molecules [1].
At present, thermo‑chemical and thermo‑catalytic processes dominate lignin valorisation. However, their reliance on external oxidants or reductants increases operational costs and complicates scale‑up, while the harsh reaction conditions typically required undermine selectivity and complicate downstream separation. In recent years, alternative routes based on photocatalysis and electrocatalysis have emerged with the promise of depolymerizing lignin under ambient conditions using only light as the driving force. Despite the significant progress in this catalytic space, monomer yields, and the mechanistic understanding of how these transformations proceed, still lag far behind those of thermocatalytic approaches.
In this talk, we will introduce a series of novel photocatalytic strategies to deconstruct lignin into specific, value‑added chemicals. We will present photocatalytic systems based on anthraquinone derivatives [2] and semiconductor quantum dots, together with a comprehensive mechanistic picture supported by complementary computational and experimental evidence that rationalizes their reactivity and product distribution. We will also discuss the prospects for holistic lignin utilization by exploring photocatalytic flow‑reactor platforms and showcasing additional photocatalytic transformations designed to edit and upgrade the resulting bio‑derived products.
N.G. thanks the “Ramon y Cajal” Program (RYC2018-023888-I) funded by MCIN/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033. The authors also thank the support of the Generalitat Valenciana/FEDER (Spain) through the project IDIFEDER/2020/002. This research is also part of the projects CNS2023-145354, PID2021-128805NA-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by the European Union “NextGenerationEU”/PRTR. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 948829).
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