Nitrogenase Bio-Inspired CO2 Reduction Catalysts – NitroCOCa

Carbon dioxide has become increasingly recognized as a valuable resource, and its large scale conversion into useful chemicals has the potential to provide cheap and renewable alternatives to fossil fuels. However, a current scientific bottleneck is the development of effective catalysts for CO2 reduction, in particular affording high added value product such as hydrocarbons. The nitrogenase enzymes – that catalyze such reactions – provide an unique inspiration to the synthetic chemist.
We propose in this project to explore the design and synthesis of new catalysts based on metal clusters mimicking the structure and functions of the nitrogenase cofactor that can activate CO2 and allow its selective multi-electron reduction to hydrocarbons. Despite the large amount of work on molecular catalysts for CO2 reduction, the design of catalysts bio-inspired by nitrogenase and devoted to promote multi-electron (>2) reduction of CO2 has to our knowledge never been investigated. This project focuses on mimicking the structure of the iron-molybdenum cofactor of nitrogenase but also aims at the development of catalytic systems combining electron reservoirs with active sites for CO2 activation. Further integration of such catalysts into electro and photocatalytic systems should allow using them in functional devices.