Abstract
The Chiral Induced Spin Selectivity (CISS) effect is the ability of chiral materials to selectively conduct electrons with a preferential spin, depending on the handedness of the material itself. The CISS effect has major implications in various fields, from biology to molecular electronics, and can have a huge impact on several technological applications. This project aims to design new chiral catalysts in order to exploit the CISS effect for improving the efficiency of the electrochemical oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in the water splitting process, so as to lower the energy needed for hydrogen production. These new chiral catalysts will be cheaper, greener and more efficient than the rare metal-based catalysts currently in use. This will be possible by exploiting the spin-polarization of the electrons, granted by the spin-filtering properties of the chiral catalyst, to reduce the energy barrier required for the formation of triplet ground state molecular oxygen at the electrode surface and to increase the selectivity of the reaction by shutting off the parasitic reactions leading instead to singlet state hydrogen peroxide. The catalysts that we propose to develop belong to the class of Chiral Electrically Conductive Coordination Polymers (CECCPs). These materials consist in a 3D network of multidentate chiral organic ligands acting as linkers and metal ions acting as nodes and are capable of efficiently conducting electric charges. During the project we will synthesize new chiral organic ligands that are suitable for the formation of CECCPs, synthetize the catalysts by solvothermal or mechanochemical techniques, characterize them via spectroscopic and electrical studies, test their activity towards the OER by electrochemical measurements, and study the structure-properties relationships concerning the catalytic and spin-filtering abilities of the CECCPs. The characterization of the materials will also exploit a new in-operando XAS measurement technique that will allow us to monitor in real time the stability of the catalyst and the formation of reaction intermediates, thus permitting to define the mechanism of the spin-polarized OER. As a practical outcome of the project, we will be able to produce a proof-of-concept catalyst that performs at least as well as the current state-of-the-art catalysts based on rare metal but contains only 1st row transition metals such as nickel, cobalt or iron.
Project details
Unibo Team Leader: Tommaso Salzillo
Unibo involved Department/s:
Dipartimento di Chimica Industriale "Toso Montanari"
Coordinator:
Università degli studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia - UNIMORE(Italy)
Total Unibo Contribution: Euro (EUR) 42.575,00
Project Duration in months: 24
Start Date:
30/11/2023
End Date:
28/02/2026
