Carbon dioxide capture: Insights from Raman spectroscopy

Increasing carbon dioxide levels stemming from various anthropogenic sources have led to adverse climatic conditions. CO₂ sequestration becomes vital to mitigate global warming. Metal organic frameworks (MOFs) have immense potential to sequester CO₂ owing to their porous and flexible architecture exhibiting high guest selectivity. While the as-synthesized structure can be predicted by X-ray diffraction, knowing in-situ structural dynamics during gas adsorption is a challenge. In the first part of the talk, I will discuss how adsorption or desorption of gases modulates the structure of MOFs. Investigating these dynamics frameworks are crucial for designing new materials with higher CO₂ uptake.
 
Furthermore, it is necessary to reduce captured CO₂ into fuels and one of the ways to achieve this is by using metal nanostructures. In addition to catalysing chemical reaction, plasmonic nanoparticles also amplify the signal of adsorbed molecules enabling their detection via surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS). In the second half of the talk, I will show different types of plasmonic nanostructures and further illustrate that silver nanoparticles exhibit high SERS enhancement and hence is a suitable catalyst for studying single molecule reaction.