Grant: Alliance Grants

New technologies and tools are needed to help Canada transition to a new low carbon economy. One industry in urgent need of more sustainable processes is the chemical synthesis industry. Chemical synthesis is essential for many of the things that provide a high standard of living: coatings and polymers, pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, cosmetics, and many more. However, today's chemical synthesis is energy and material intensive and new approaches are needed to improve its sustainability and ensure the continuity of the chemical synthesis industry in a low carbon economy. A recent promising development has been the discovery and application of photocatalysis in chemical reactions. Photocatalysis is a way of making unreactive molecules react together using the energy in light. Importantly, photocatalysis can make use of sustainable solar energy, either directly or through solar cells powering artificial lighting, making it much more energy efficient. The current limitation of photocatalysis is the narrow range of the types of chemical molecules and reaction where photocatalysis has an advantage over traditional thermal synthesis approaches. This international collaboration aims to establish new chemical synthesis tools to decarbonize industrial chemical synthesis processes using photocatalysis. To expand the range of compatible molecules and reactions, we will develop new kinds of photocatalytic materials. 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 it does not have the oxidative reactivity to work with simple, widely accessible chemical feedstocks. We will leverage our material science expertise to develop carbon-based photocatalysts with improved properties and enhanced reactivity. The development of improved photocatalysts and photocatalytic reactions will help Canadian industries improve their energy and material efficiencies, making their business cases stronger, and embrace the emerging low carbon economy as leaders in sustainable practices.