Plasmonic catalyst smashes record for reducing vital chemical feedstock

A method to reduce nitroarenes to amines – a key process in the chemical industry that normally requires extreme conditions and toxic reagents – has been demonstrated under ambient conditions using visible light. The process, which uses the earth-abundant plasmonic photocatalyst copper iron sulfide to supply hot electrons and holes, achieves a cost-normalised production rate about 10 times greater than the state of the art, and could therefore potentially play an important role in reducing the chemical industry’s carbon footprint.

The reduction of nitroaromatic chemicals to their corresponding amines is a key intermediate step in producing paints, polymers, agrochemicals and pharmaceuticals like paracetamol. However, the standard methods used today usually require temperatures of over 100˚C, noble metal catalysts and hydrogen gas at over 5MPa. Several groups have devised noble metal-free alternatives based on photocatalysis, but these have often suffered from long reaction times or poor selectivities or still required elevated temperatures and high-pressure hydrogen.