The chemical industry needs to substitute fossil-based energy and resources by renewable energy and sustainable carbon feedstocks such as CO2 and biomass, to reduce environmentally harmful emissions stemming from fossil-derived carbon. To sustain the production of chemicals and materials that propel modern development, this research consortium of academic institutions, technology providers, and technology end-users will develop durable electrodes and electrochemical processes for conversion of carbon dioxide to platform chemicals based on formaldehyde, while simultaneously upgrading bio-acids into bio-chemicals. We will validate the feasibility of electrodes based on earth-abundant carbon, thus eliminating the necessity of critical elements.

Many electrochemical reactions are electrode-structure sensitive. This research proposal is focused on structure-selective electrode synthesis by using metal solid-state dewetting, i.e. the heat-induced transformation of thin metal films into self-organized arrangements of metal particles. Dewetting phenomena will be induced by an innovative, controlled manner to achieve a nanoscale-accurate, scalable and direct integration of catalytic metal nanoparticles on supporting electrode surfaces. The project tackles key challenges in the design of electrocatalysts, at different size scales. To address the control of selectivity in electrocatalytic reactions, dewetting will be guided by epitaxial interactions to produce arrangements of precisely-faceted metal nanocrystals. Besides, dewetting will be interlaced at the mesoscale with additional self-ordering principles, yielding tools such as templated-dewetting and dewetting-alloying for an entirely self-organized design of nanostructured electrodes. Overall, the research will pave the way towards m2-sized electrodes functionalized with catalytic nanoparticles of low polydispersity in shape, size and composition, hence enabling a highly-reliable control of macroscopic properties (activity, selectivity). The developed materials are expected to have impact in various industrial application areas such as electro-synthesis of chemical building blocks (bio-oil upgrading, synthesis of H2O2 or Cl2) or waste stream recycling (nitrate removal from wastewaters). In other words, the project envisions to enable society to implement renewable electricity to allow for “green” production of chemicals; i.e. a sustainable alternative to fossil fuel-driven processes, thereby reducing green-house gas emissions. As a bonus, the research will foster expansion of underlying knowledge on mechanistic aspects and nanoscale control of metal solid-state dewetting, and will also provide key innovative concepts and tools for the direct application of dewetting in various fields such as photocatalysis, photo-electrochemistry, electro-analytical chemistry, sensing or plasmonics.