Catalysts for the activation of renewable resource to make polymers and fuels.

Using renewable resources to make chemicals and fuels is a major societal challenge and a growth area for synthetic chemistry. This lecture will focus on our work in the area of using plants and/or carbon dioxide as raw materials to make polymers and fuels, such as methanol. Using renewable resources such as CO2/carbohydrates requires energy input and thus catalysis has an important role to play in improving efficiency and reducing energy usage. Here, the development of new homogeneous catalysts, based on complexes of inexpensive metals such as Zn/Mg, will be presented. The catalytic performance in particular control over the rate, stereochemistry and chemical selectivity for the production of aliphatic polyesters and polycarbonates will be described. The characterization (spectroscopy, DFT) and kinetics of these catalysts enable the development of new hypotheses to rationalize the mechanisms/reaction pathways by which they are operating. Carbon dioxide hydrogenation to produce methanol using colloidal nanoparticles, of metals/metal oxides, will be described.