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

化学合成业是加拿大和德国经济的重要支柱，是药品、农用化学品、化妆品、涂料和聚合物等高价值商品生产的基础。德国的化学工业在2020年以1600亿欧元的收入位居全球第三。2021年，加拿大的化学制造业价值10亿加元，直接雇用78,500人，间接支持了额外的392,500个工作岗位。然而，当今的化学合成是能源和材料密集型的，需要新的方法来提高其可持续性。化学部门的可持续性需要探索能够大幅减少能源消耗的不同办法。与其他工业子部门相比，化学工业是最大的能源消耗者和第三大二氧化碳排放直接来源。为了实现净零排放目标，到2030年，二氧化碳排放必须与生产脱钩，而这不是我们目前正在走向的方向。迫切需要新的合成工具，以确保化学合成行业在向新的低碳经济过渡期间的连续性。光催化是一种利用光能使非活性分子发生反应的方法，正在开发中，以获得更良性和可持续的化学反应条件。重要的是，光催化可以直接或通过太阳能电池为人工照明提供动力，利用可持续的太阳能。然而，光催化在化学转化中的广泛应用受到有效光驱动反应范围狭窄和难以使用简单、未活化的化学原料的阻碍。这一国际合作旨在建立新的工具，利用光催化来实现工业化学合成过程的脱碳。通过将德国的化学合成专业知识和加拿大的材料专业知识结合起来，我们的目标是开发新的、更可持续的合成工艺，更好地利用材料，消耗更少的能源，并减少二氧化碳排放。我们的起点是氮化碳，这是一种由尿素等简单而廉价的前体制成的聚合物光催化剂。典型的氮化碳已被证明对一些光催化转化是有用的，但需要更极端的氧化和还原电位来充分利用简单、广泛获得的化学原料。通过利用德国的化学合成专业知识和加拿大的材料专业知识，我们将推进基础研究，开发新型光催化剂和光催化反应。加拿大和德国的工业可以使用这些技术来提高其化学合成过程的能源和材料效率，从而实现更具环境可持续性的化学部门。

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.