Vorträge-Koll

Prof. Dr. Erwin Reisner, University of Cambridge, UK: Solar Chemical Technologies Solar panels are well established to produce electricity as photovoltaic cells and are already in advanced development to photo-catalyse overall water splitting to produce green hydrogen as artificial leaves or photocatalyst sheets. This presentation will introduce solar chemistry panels as an emerging technology to enable sunlight-powered circular carbon chemistry. Our progress in designing and constructing prototype solar devices for the direct conversion of carbon dioxide as well as the coupling to the valorisation of biomass and plastic waste streams into renewable fuels and higher-value chemicals will be presented.

Ohio State University "Elucidating The Role of Unsymmetric Features in Bimetallic Active Sites" Bimetallic active sites are common among metalloproteins. The individual metal ions in a binuclear active site, however, may play distinct roles in the overall functions. Our group designed small-molecule coordination complexes to reproduce the ubiquitous unsymmetric features of bimetallic active sites in nature, e.g., (i) inequivalent primary coordination sphere, (ii) inequivalent secondary coordination sphere, and (iii) unsymmetric metal binding (heterobimetallic center). These coordination complexes are used to elucidate the influence of an inequivalent coordination environment on the reactivity of bimetallic centers. Our study reveals the correlation between unsymmetric features and electronic structures and rationalizes reactivity profiles of unsymmetric bimetallic complexes.

Dr. Simon Rickert, ETH Zürich (Title to be announced) ...............................................