Research Projects

This project addresses the urgent challenge of reducing atmospheric CO₂ while advancing sustainable energy technologies. Inspired by formate dehydrogenase (FDH), it aims to develop novel nickel-based molecular electrocatalysts that efficiently convert CO₂ into formate/formic acid—a valuable energy carrier and chemical feedstock. By integrating bioinspired catalyst design with renewable energy principles, the catalysts target low overpotential and high Faradaic efficiency (FE), supporting green decarbonization efforts. Existing catalysts show trade-offs: pyridine-dithiolate systems have low overpotential but poor FE, while phosphine-ligated catalysts achieve high FE at high overpotential. This project seeks to overcome these limitations by designing FDH-inspired nickel catalysts combining phosphine and benzene dithiolate ligands to synergistically reduce overpotential and enhance FE. Ligands bearing nitrogen, sulfur, and phosphorus coordination sites are promising for mimicking FDH activity. We plan to synthesize phosphine-thiolate ligands with pendent amines to tune selectivity, performing all air-sensitive synthesis under inert atmosphere and characterizing intermediates by various spectroscopic and crystallographic methods. Metalation with NiX₂·6H₂O will yield nickel complexes coordinated with benzene dithiolate to replicate the FDH active site, alongside triphos-ligated complexes for comparison. The complexes’ structure, electrochemical behavior under argon and CO₂, and catalytic mechanisms will be extensively studied via kinetic analyses, product quantification, and benchmarking.