Proceedings of nanoGe Spring Meeting 2022 (NSM22)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.29363/nanoge.nsm.2022.369
Publication date: 7th February 2022
If powered by renewable electricity, carbon dioxide electroreduction can be used as a sustainable alternative to synthesize chemical and fuels. Although research has been focused on the production of C1 and C2 products (methanol, ethylene and ethanol), higher molecules as n-propanol and yet more complex C4 molecules have been rarely reported. This work explores the reaction mechanism that allow the formation of both C3 and C4 backbones. Electrolysis of key molecular intermediates, supported with density functional theory and graph representation of the reaction network, allowed us to explain the mechanistic paths responsible for the observed selectivity. Generation of acetaldehyde (a common intermediate to most C2-C4 products) starts from the electrorreduction of CO2. Besides, propionaldehyde and 1-propanol come from the coupling of CH2CH with CHO. Although it shares common intermediates with 1-propanol, propylene is barely produced in eCO2R due to the unfavourable formation of its allyl alkoxy precursor, CH2CHCH2O. Aldol condensation catalyzed in basic media produces crotonaldehyde, which is then reduced to butanal and 1-butanol, leading to the C4 products. In a broad context, our results point to the relevance of coupling chemical and electrochemical processes for the synthesis of higher molecular weight products from CO2.
Barcelona Supercomputing Center.
Flow Photo Chem (Grant number 862453)
Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (Grant number RTI2018-101394-B-I00)
Excelencia Severo Ochoa
National University of Singapore
NCCR Catalysis
nanoGe is a prestigious brand of successful science conferences that are developed along the year in different areas of the world since 2009. Our worldwide conferences cover cutting-edge materials topics like perovskite solar cells, photovoltaics, optoelectronics, solar fuel conversion, surface science, catalysis and two-dimensional materials, among many others.
Previously nanoGe Spring Meeting (NSM) and nanoGe Fall Meeting (NFM), MATSUS is a multiple symposia conference focused on a broad set of topics of advanced materials preparation, their fundamental properties, and their applications, in fields such as renewable energy, photovoltaics, lighting, semiconductor quantum dots, 2-D materials synthesis, charge carriers dynamics, microscopy and spectroscopy semiconductors fundamentals, etc.
International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics
International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics (HOPV) is celebrated yearly in May. The main topics are the development, function and modeling of materials and devices for hybrid and organic solar cells. The field is now dominated by perovskite solar cells but also other hybrid technologies, as organic solar cells, quantum dot solar cells, and dye-sensitized solar cells and their integration into devices for photoelectrochemical solar fuel production.
Asia-Pacific International Conference on Perovskite, Organic Photovoltaics and Optoelectronics
The main topics of the Asia-Pacific International Conference on Perovskite, Organic Photovoltaics and Optoelectronics (IPEROP) are discussed every year in Asia-Pacific for gathering the recent advances in the fields of material preparation, modeling and fabrication of perovskite and hybrid and organic materials. Photovoltaic devices are analyzed from fundamental physics and materials properties to a broad set of applications. The conference also covers the developments of perovskite optoelectronics, including light-emitting diodes, lasers, optical devices, nanophotonics, nonlinear optical properties, colloidal nanostructures, photophysics and light-matter coupling.
The International Conference on Perovskite Thin Film Photovoltaics Perovskite Photonics and Optoelectronics (NIPHO) is the best place to hear the latest developments in perovskite solar cells as well as on recent advances in the fields of perovskite light-emitting diodes, lasers, optical devices, nanophotonics, nonlinear optical properties, colloidal nanostructures, photophysics and light-matter coupling.