Research Projects

The increasing concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide is a major driver of climate change, while the global demand for sustainable fuels and chemicals continues to rise. CO₂ reduction reaction offers a promising pathway to convert CO₂ into valuable chemicals. Also, water splitting is an emerging field of research for the widespread implementation of artificial photosynthesis at a technological level. This is a hot research topic for sustainable energy sources for harvesting clean fuels H₂ gas having zero carbon footprint. Most of the reported CO₂ reducing photo as well as electrocatalysts face challenges such as low selectivity, poor stability, and high energy requirements. Significant efforts have given to develop CO₂ reduction catalysts, with Cu-based materials emerging as promising candidates for producing higher carbon products. The backbone of this project is efficient catalysts designing for both CO₂RR and green H₂ production, which directly contribute to carbon utilization technologies, renewable and clean energy demand. Recent reports with photoelectrocatalysts struggle with less than 40% Faradic Efficiency (FE), less than 30% selectivity, less than 0.1% TOF and very low production rate. To bypass these limitations designing new covalent organic framework (COF) based catalysts will be ideal. Considering all these facts, in this project, we will develop a photocathode based on highly porous porphyrin (Por)-3D COFs and a modified BiVO₄ will be my photoanode to carry out the counter reaction. This approach will address the limitations of conventional catalysts like poor tenability, high overpotential by leveraging the precise control over geometric and electronic properties offered by molecular toolkit. The novel aspects of the proposed project aims to design 3D-CuPorCOF/3D-NiPorCOF-based photocathode. Although there are only a few reports for the formation of ethylene via the valorization of CO₂ but the selectivity and the production rate is very low. To bypass these problems, 3D-CuPorCOF/3D-NiPorCOF-based photocathode by using a scalable coating onto Gas Diffusion Electrode (GDE) will be ideal and to the best of our knowledge, it has not been reported yet. This strategy is clearly beyond the state of the art where we will create a favorable local microenvironment and electrochemical surface reconstruction at the electrode surface. This will involve Solar-to-Fuel Conversion Efficiency (STF greater than 30%), incident Photon-to-Current Efficiency (IPCE grater than 70%) and high yield hydrogen production with minimal energy input. With green energy resources I will tune the framework with different amine linkers to optimize the local environment and cavity size. The use of in-situ FTIR and pre-and post-catalytic characterization of catalysts will help us to understand the catalytic reactivity and the product selectivity by unravelling the reaction pathway.