Preliminary announcement on the upcoming international joint research call : "Solar-Driven Chemistry 2"

The French National Agency pre-announces the upcoming international joint research call « Solar-driven chemistry 2 ». The joint call brings together 6 funding organizations from 6 countries (Finland (AF), France (ANR), Germany (DFG), Poland (NCN), Switzerland (SNSF) and Turkey (TUBITAK). This two-steps call is expected to be launched at mid July 2021.

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 :

• Each project consortium must consist of at least two (2) up to four (4) partners from at least two (2) up to four (4) countries.
• 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. Changing the consortium and thus the topic of the application is mandatory.
• 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 offers already the possibility for bilateral proposals with some partners (DFG and SFNS) within its annual national generic call, bilateral German-French or Swiss-French proposals are not allowed in this present multilateral call.

ANR Contacts :

Mélanie Lorion
+ 33-1 73 54 82 37
melanie.lorion(at)agencerecherche.fr 

Pascal Bain
pascal.bain(at)agencerecherche.fr 

Céline Croutxé-Barghorn
celine.croutxe-barghorn(at)agencerecherche.fr