NSERC-DFG SUSTAIN: Development of Organic Photocatalyst Materials to Broaden the Use of Sustainable Photocatalysis in Organic Syntheses

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The chemical synthesis industry is an important pillar of Canadian and German economies and underpins the production of high-value commodities such as pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, cosmetics, coatings, and polymers. Germany’s chemical industry is the 3rd largest internationally with a revenue of 160 billion EURO in 2020. In 2021, the chemical manufacturing industry in Canada was worth $64 billion CAD, directly employed 78,500 people, and indirectly supported an additional 392,500 jobs. However, today’s chemical syntheses are energy and material intensive and new approaches are needed to improve their sustainability. Sustainability of the chemical sector requires the exploration of different approaches that can lead to significant reductions in energy consumption. Compared to other industrial subsectors, the chemical industry is the largest energy consumer and third largest direct source of CO2 emissions. To reach Net Zero goals, CO2 emissions must decouple from production by 2030, which is not the direction we are currently heading in. New synthetic tools critically are needed to ensure the continuity of the chemical synthesis industry during the transition to a new low carbon economy. Photocatalysis, a way of making unreactive molecules react using the energy of light, is being developed to access more benign and sustainable chemical reaction conditions. Importantly, photocatalysis can make use of sustainable solar energy, either directly or through solar cells powering artificial lighting. However, broad application of photocatalysis in chemical transformations is hampered by the narrow range of effective light-driven reactions and the difficulty of using simple, unactivated chemical feedstocks. This international collaboration aims to establish new tools to decarbonize industrial chemical synthesis processes using photocatalysis. By bringing together chemical synthesis expertise from Germany and materials expertise in Canada, we aim to develop new, more sustainable synthetic processes that make better use of materials, consume less energy, and reduce CO2 emissions. Our starting point is carbon nitride, a polymeric photocatalysts made from simple and inexpensive precursors such as urea. Typical carbon nitride has proved to be useful for some photocatalytic transformations, but more extreme oxidative and reductive potentials are needed to fully utilize simple, widely accessible chemical feedstocks. By leveraging chemical synthesis expertise from Germany and materials expertise in Canada, we will advance fundamental research and generate novel photocatalysts and photocatalytic reactions. These can be used by Canadian and German industries to improve the energy and material efficiencies of their chemical synthesis processes, leading to a more environmentally sustainable chemical sector.