International call "Photochimie Solaire – Solar-Driven Chemistry 2"

The French National Agency participates to the second international joint research call « Solar-Driven Chemistry 2 » The joint call brings togethrt 6 funding organizations from 6 countries (Finland (AF), France (ANR), Germany (DFG), Poland (NCN), Switzerland (SNSF) and Turkey (TUBITAK). 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 and charge separation issues, catalytic, electrode, membrane, etc. materials.
• Materials science and development (including high-throughput computing, ‘materials by design’ approaches, advanced characterization and in situ / operando measurements methodologies) to address performance, stability and sustainability, as long as they are used for the photochemical conversion of small molecules
• Investigating fundamental mechanisms of catalysis, including bio-inspired, enzymatic, molecular and inorganic catalysis (understand, design and benchmark selective, fast, energy-efficient, stable and O2/poison-tolerant catalysts) and light harvesting, if focus is on photochemical conversion of small molecules
• Heterogeneous photoelectrochemistry/photocatalysis (including surface-confined molecular systems)
• Photo(electro)catalytic water splitting
• Photochemical or photoelectrochemical CO2 reduction (including combined CO2 capture and conversion for instance)
• Development of new photoactive systems if related to the general call topic
• Reaction engineering, engineering of photoreactors and related multiscale-multiphysics approaches
• Molecular model systems capable of direct conversion, e.g. for mechanistic studies
• Photocatalytic conversion of organic substrates using O2, H2O and CO2 without sacrificial electron donor/acceptor

 The following topics are excluded from the call:

• Genetic engineering of plants for this purpose.
• Conversion by living organisms
• Biomass conversion.
• 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.
• Standard photocatalytic reactions (e.g., catalytic reactions using UV radiation)
• Thermal processes driven by solar energy (e.g. by concentrating solar power technologies etc
• CO2 concentration and storage.

Conditions : (See call text for detailed conditions) :

• Each project consortium must consist of at least two (2) up to four (4) partners eligible to funding organisations from at least two (2) up to four (4) different countries participating in this call.
• Each applicant is only allowed to participate in one application within this call
• Projects and consortia, that already received funding in the first call 2019/2020 are not eligible to apply for a second funding period.
• Proposals that did not receive funding in the first call 2019/2020 can be re-submitted, if revised
• Research projects will be funded for either 24 or 36 months

As ANR already offers the possibility for bilateral proposals with some partners (DFG and SNFS) to apply within its annual national Generic call, bilateral German-French or Swiss-French proposals are not allowed in this present multilateral call. However, bilateral Finnish-French (AKA-ANR), Polish-French (NCN-ANR) or Turkish-French (Tübitak-ANR) proposals and any trilateral or quadrilateral proposals with French participants applying to ANR are allowed within this call.

There will be a two-stage application and evaluation procedure involving pre-proposals and full proposals. The DFG acts as Call Secretariat, therefore all pre-proposals and full proposals must be submitted to DFG’s “elan” application system (see below). Please note that all applicants need to be registered in the “elan” system (deadline: 10/25/2021 23h59 CET). The confirmation of the registration takes about three working days.

Full proposals involving french participants will also have to be submitted to ANR’s application website. Applicants are strongly advised to thoroughly read the call text, the annex for french participants and the guidelines for applicants available below.

During all the process, you can contact the DFG which acts as Call Secretariat.