(550c) Towards Sustainable Energy: Novel Liquid-like Organic Hybrid Nanomaterials for CO2 Capture and Conversion

The rapidly-increasing concentration of Greenhouse Gases, particularly CO₂, in the atmosphere has become one of the most difficult challenges faced by humanity, while the use of carboneous fuels is still important for the health of the global communities. Therefore, various carbon capture and storage technologies are currently being developed to meet this challenge. Amine-based aqueous solvents represent the most mature CO₂ capture method but their large-scale deployment is still compromised because of their highly volatile nature, tendency to degrade, corrosiveness and high energy penalty associated with the solvent regeneration. To address these issues, the development of an alternative CO₂ capture solvent has become a very active research area. Liquid-like Nanoparticle Organic Hybrid Materials (NOHMs) are one of these novel CO₂ solvents with a number of interesting chemical and physical properties. NOHMs are a new class of organic-inorganic hybrids that consist of a hard nanoparticle core functionalized with a molecular organic (e.g., polymeric) corona that possesses a high degree of tunability.  NOHMs are non-volatile and stable over a very wide temperature range, which make them interesting materials for various energy and environmental applications. The enthalpic and entropic mechanisms of CO₂ sorption in NOHMs will be discussed along with parameters relevant to CO₂ capture technologies, e.g. selectivity, recyclability, thermal stability or viscosity.