Selective catalysts are urgently needed for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER), the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and CO2 fixation/reduction reactions (CO2RR) in order to replace fossil fuels with renewable fuels. To date, noble metals and precious metal catalysts have achieved the best performance in energy yield and Faradaic efficiency, and have recently reached impressive electrical-to-chemical power conversion efficiencies. However, the scarcity of precious metals makes the search for scalable, non-precious or even metal-free catalysts for the above mentioned reactions all the more important. During the lecture, I will discuss our synthesis efforts to develop functional materials based on metal corrole systems and subsequently show their application as catalysts for OER/ORRs and CO2RR.
Forschungs-