Carbon Dioxide Functionalization by Aluminum-based Metal-Only Frustrated Lewis Pairs

The continued rise in global temperatures, driven by excessive greenhouse gas emissions, has brought carbon dioxide (CO2) to the forefront of global challenges. As the most abundant greenhouse gas, CO2 presents both a critical issue and a unique opportunity: its removal and conversion into value-added products have become key goals for scientists, industries, and policymakers. Despite their thermodynamic stability and kinetic inertness, small molecules like CO2 represent abundant, non-toxic feedstocks. Their capture and functionalization remain vibrant areas of chemical research, with strategies increasingly drawing on cooperative reactivity between elements. Bimetallic systems, where two metals work in tandem, offer a promising route to overcome the inertness of CO2 due to their complex but tunable reactivity. Aluminum is particularly compelling candidate: it is earth-abundant, exhibits diverse bonding behavior, and maintains a metallic character. This proposal seeks to pair aluminum with gold, a transition metal well-known for its catalytic properties and redox flexibility. The resulting Al–Au bimetallic compounds are expected to exhibit formal metal–metal interactions, enabling cooperative CO2 activation. Inspired by related systems, this project aims to synthesize and study new bimetallic complexes to explore their reactivity with CO2 and evaluate their potential for transformation into valuable products such as oxalate.

Faculty Supervisor:

Marcus Drover

Student:

Partner:

Spanish National Research Council

Discipline:

Physics

Sector:

Green/Alternative Energy; Sustainability & the Environment

University:

The University of Western Ontario

Program: