International call “Solar-driven Chemistry” for applications on Chemistry

ANR participates in the Joint Call “Solar-driven Chemistry”, between Finland, France, Germany, Poland and Switzerland.Subject of this call for proposals is fundamental research in all sub-areas relevant to the photochemical transformation of small, abundant molecules, such as carbon dioxide, water or nitrogen, into more valuable, storable chemicals by means of solar radiation.

Focus of the proposals should be on the photochemical processes (reactions) and on solving fundamental problems. Typical (but not exclusive) examples include preparative, physicochemical, analytical and theoretical work (always related to the general call topic) on

• Research on light-converting/harvesting, catalytic, electrode, membrane, etc. materials
• Materials issues (e.g. photochemical stability of relevant materials), as long as they are used for the photochemical conversion of small molecules
• Investigating mechanisms of catalysis and light harvesting, if focus is on photochemical conversion of small molecules
• Heterogeneous photoelectrochemistry/photocatalysis
• Photocatalytic water splitting
• Photochemical or photoelectrochemical CO2 reduction
• Development of new photoactive systems if  related to the general call topic
• Reaction engineering
• Molecular model systems capable of direct conversion, e.g. for mechanistic studies

The following topics are excluded from the call:

• Conversion by living organisms and biocatalysts (enzymes, etc.) unless the biocatalysts are used in combination with a synthetic catalyst
• Improvement or scale-up of known technologies, such as Fischer-Tropsch, methanol, hydrogen or syngas technologies, water electrolysis, etc., unless completely new catalysts are being developed
• Optimization of established (photo)catalytic systems
• Thermal processes driven by solar energy (e.g. by concentrating solar power technologies etc.)
• CO2 concentration and storage
• Reactor design
• Standard photocatalytic reactions (e.g., catalytic reactions using UV radiation)
• Genetic engineering of plants for this purpose
• Biomass conversion

There will be a two-stage procedure involving pre-proposals and full proposals. The DFG acts as Call Secretariat, therefore all pre-proposals and full proposals must submitted to DFG’s “elan” submission system https://elan.dfg.de/dana-na/auth/url_3/welcome.cgi

For projects selected for funding, each partner of the consortium will be funded directly by its respective national funding organisation. Therefore, all national regulations apply. In particular, the French applicants must read the document entitled “Modalités de participation pour les participants français” available on this webpage.