Bio-inspired Carbon Dioxide Activation on Heterobimetallic Complexes

二氧化碳的高效活化和直接转化为CO、乙酸或甲醇是当前的挑战和现代社会的需要。如果二氧化碳可以选择性地转化为这些分子，现代化学的当前原料可能会完全从石油转变为二氧化碳。使用温室气体二氧化碳，而不是石油，将导致我们大气中这种污染物的减少。此外，燃烧产生的燃料将导致空气中二氧化碳水平的环境中性平衡，因此是一项非常可取的尝试。目前的催化剂仅提供了通过逐步还原为CO将二氧化碳转化为CO的可能性。这种还原中间体，二氧化碳自由基阴离子，会导致大量的副产物，而目前已知的只有几种催化剂绕过了这种活性中间体。然而，必须避免这种自由基，才能提供具有高周转数(TON)和高产物形成选择性的催化剂。该项目旨在产生新型的生物灵感双金属络合物，可以激活二氧化碳，并允许还原为一氧化碳。

The efficient activation and direct conversion of CO2 into CO, acetic acid, or methanol is a current challenge and a need of modern society. If CO2 could be selectively converted into these molecules, the current feedstock of modern chemistry could be entirely changed from oil to CO2. The use of the greenhouse gas CO2, as opposed to oil, would result in a decrease of this pollutant in our atmosphere. In addition, combustion of generated fuels would lead to an environmentally neutral balance of the CO2 level in air and is therefore a highly desirable venture. Recent catalysts solely provide the possibility to transform CO2 by a stepwise reduction to CO. This reduction intermediate, CO2 radical anion, leads to numerous side products and only a few catalysts are known that bypass this reactive intermediate. This radical, however, has to be avoided to afford a catalyst with high turnover numbers (TON) and high selectivity in product formation. The project aims at the generation of novel bio-inspired bimetallic metal complexes that can activate CO2 and allow reduction to CO.