Molecular Catalysis of the CO2 Reduction with Highly Active Fe Complexes. From CO2 to CO and then CH4

Recent attention aroused by the reduction of carbon dioxide has as main objective the production of useful products and fuels – the “solar fuels” – in which solar energy would be stored. One route to this goal consists in first converting sunlight energy into electricity than could be further used to reduce CO₂ electrochemically. Another approach is to directly use the visible photons and photocatalyze the reduction oft he gas in the presence (or not) of an appropriate sensitizer and of a sacrificial electron donor.  By using earth abundant Fe based complexes (mainly substituted tetraphenyl porphyrins) we have recently found that it was possible to selectively and efficiently convert CO₂ and CO, and then to further reduce the carbon monoxide. Our recent results will be presented and discussed.