Investigating the photo-catalytic activity of molybdenum clusters for the reduction of CO2 into methanol and production of H2 from water – PHOTOCAT

PHOTOCAT aims at studying the reaction mechanisms of two alternative photo-catalytic processes. One deals with recycling CO2 into organic “platform” chemicals such as methanol. The other produces clean/renewable hydrogen fuel from water. Both of these processes involve transition metal clusters as photo-catalytic centers. The idea is to use an ion trap mass spectrometer as a molecular reactor in the gas-phase, where selected ions (reactive intermediates) can react under controlled conditions with neutral reagents and the progress of the reaction is monitored by mass spectrometry (MS). This will permit to evaluate the reactive properties of intermediates at every step of the catalytic cycle and to understand the details of the mechanism. A virtuous iterative cycle between synthesis and MS will lead to metallic clusters with optimal performances.