Photo-catalysis

🌱 From biomass to value-added chemicals — powered by Copper@Carbon catalysts.
Sincere warm congratulations to all co-authors!!! Especially to you, dear Ahmed!, for your priceless help.
Our new review in ChemCatChem explores how copper–carbon materials can help drive greener chemical processes by combining:
🔸 Cu active sites for selective redox chemistry
🔸 Conductive porous carbon for electron transfer
🔸 Strong Cu–C synergy for stability and performance
🔸 Smart synthesis routes including hydrothermal methods, impregnation, M*F pyrolysis, and CVD
The big picture? Affordable, tunable, and future-ready catalysts for sustainable biomass conversion.
📘 New review article: Copper@Carbon Materials for Sustainable Chemical Processes: Synthesis, Function, and Future Directions

https://www.photo-catalysis.org/publications/coppercarbon-materials-for-sustainable-chemical-processes-synthesis-function-and-future-directions

Zero of 36 “widely recyclable” cups got recycled.
Stop calling this a recycling system. It is branded waste.

Why Starbucks’ cups are so hard to recycle Greenwashing covers up the broken recycling system in the US, nonprofit investigation shows

🌍 The climate crisis demands cleaner energy and chemicals. Prof. Colmenares's team at the Institute of Physical Chemistry (Polish Academy of Sciences) has spent over a decade pioneering catalysts and photoreactors that turn contaminated water and air into green hydrogen and hydrogen peroxide. Their innovations, fine-tuned nanostructured catalysts, plasmonic sonophotocatalysts, lead-free perovskites and the ReactoReQ photoreforming reactor—can replace polluting, fossil-fuel processes. By harnessing sunlight, these technologies cut up to 830 million tonnes of CO2 emissions each year and create local, safe supplies of clean fuel and natural oxidant. This is the future of energy and chemistry. Let's invest in science that brings sustainable solutions to the world. 💧⚡
https://www.photo-catalysis.org/news/colmenares-group-ushers-in-a-green-hydrogen-and-peroxide-revolution

From my Intl Cooperation: My sincere congratulations to all co-authors, especially to Dr. Bappi for taking care on this interesting project, where: Solid catalysts are brilliant, until they coke, sinter, poison, and quietly die. Homogeneous systems are elegant, until recovery becomes a headache. Liquid metal catalysts break this old binary. They self-renew, host single atoms, tune interfaces in real time, and may do what rigid surfaces cannot: adapt. Not magic. Not hype. Still many scale-up problems. But definitely a warning shot to classical catalysis.

Liquid Metal Catalysts: A Unified Framework for Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Catalysis AbstractCatalysis plays a fundamental role in most chemical transformations. However, traditional heterogeneous solid and homogeneous molecular catalysis systems generally suffer from limitations, such as coking, sintering and thermal instability, to perform catalytic chemical transformations at hi...

Nauka to nie koszt. Nauka to inwestycja w przyszłość Polski.

Dlatego wspieram majową kampanię „3% dla nauki, 100% dla Polski” i proszę Państwa o to samo.

Podpiszmy petycję:
https://www.petycjeonline.com/3_procent_na_nauke

Spotkajmy się także 27 maja w godz. 13:00–14:00 pod Sejmem. Każda osoba ma znaczenie. Im więcej nas będzie, tym większa szansa, że głos środowiska naukowego zostanie usłyszany przez media, opinię publiczną i decydentów.

Domagamy się godnych warunków pracy dla pracowników nauki, stabilnego wsparcia dla studentów i doktorantów oraz realnych środków na prowadzenie badań.

Szczegóły: https://3procentnanauke.pl

Udostępnijmy tę informację szeroko. Polska potrzebuje silnej nauki.

Juan Carlos

3procentnanauke

🚀 From the lab to the real world! May 5–7, 2026 we’re taking over PTAK LaboTech at Ptak Warsaw Expo with “ReactoReQ,” our breakthrough photoreactor. Powered by a single LED that delivers precise light, it handles reactions in liquids, suspensions and even on coatings. No tools, no wasted energy—just a game changing device that turns organic waste into hydrogen. This isn’t another gadget; it’s a tool to reshape how we think about chemistry. Drop by our booth and see for yourself!
📍 Hall B, entrance B8, stand B
🌍

Presentation of the “ReactoReQ” photoreactor developed at the Institute at PTAK LaboTech 2026 On 5 – 7 May 2026 the inaugural LABOTECH trade fair for laboratory equipment and technologies will be held at the PTAK Warsaw Expo centre in Nadarzyn, near Warsaw. The event brings together equipment manufacturers, researchers and industry partners from across Europe. A group of researche...

For years, science taught a neat, comfortable story about how smell is organized. Now detailed mapping shows the nose is far more structured than the textbooks claimed.
That is how real science works: not by defending old models, but by replacing them when better data arrives. Dogma is cheap. Evidence is not.

First detailed ‘smell maps’ reveal how noses track odours Detailed maps of smell receptors in the nose overturn textbook models of olfactory receptor organization in mice.

We’re so proud to celebrate the hard work and ingenuity behind two extraordinary Ph.D. theses at the Dipartimento di Scienze Molecolari e Nanosistemi, Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia!
🔬 Asymmetric Catalysis in Water – Davide Frigatti redesigned an industrial process using chiral surfactants, cutting the environmental impact by 63 % while boosting selectivity. Sustainability isn’t a buzzword; it’s a design principle.
💡 Light Driven Transformations – Ilaria Bertuol’s thesis brings photo initiated polymerization, photocatalytic oxidation, and fluorescent nanomaterials together in one powerful toolkit. Think lubricious syringe coatings, green oxidation and photonic composites – all without heavy metals.
🧠 Expert Insight – Prof. Dr. Juan Carlos Colmenares served as external reviewer. He praised the real world relevance and sustainability of both projects and recommended them for doctoral degrees.
🎤 Special Lecture – Prof. Colmenares also gave a talk titled “From Sonophotocatalysis to Piezo Photoredox: Breakthrough Materials Approaches Enabling Concurrent Organic Synthesis and H₂/H₂O₂ Generation.” It’s a mouthful, but the message is clear: combining sound and light can yield cleaner chemistry and energy.
🙏 A huge thank you to Prof. Dr. Alvise Perosa and Dr. Daily Rodríguez Padrón for making this exchange happen. Collaboration drives innovation.
Let’s keep pushing the boundaries of green chemistry together! 🌱

Venice Unleashed: Prof. Colmenares Reimagines PhD Defenses as Launchpads for Powerful Partnerships Venice, Italy: April 20th – 23rd, 2026:Abstracts of the Ph.D. theses and the expert’s roleAlternative Solvents and Innovative Synthetic Pathways for the Formation of Dimers – Davide Frigatti. This thesis develops asymmetric catalysis in aqueous micellar media using chiral surfactants and rede...

News from my group: Scientists from Poland, France and Colombia have teamed up to solve a critical problem in green chemistry. Their review explains how combining photocatalysis with piezocatalysis, using light and mechanical vibrations, boosts the conversion of biomass into high value chemicals. This hybrid approach overcomes the low efficiency and high energy demands of conventional methods. Thanks to support from Poland’s National Science Centre, this collaboration is pushing us toward a low carbon future. 🌍🔬🇵🇱🇫🇷🇨🇴

Synergistic Photocatalysis and Piezocatalysis in Organic Coupling: Mechanistic Insights, Perspectives, and Emerging Challenges AbstractThis critical review aims to highlight the problem and confusion among the scientific community between sono- and piezocatalysis effect nomenclature, especially whenever the photocatalytic effect is included. We have summarized, compared, and critically evaluated state-of-the-art experiments...

News from my group: A new sillenite photocatalyst is opening fresh paths for wastewater remediation.
My sincere congratulations to all authors, especially to you, Ahmed, for being "the catalyst" of this interesting scientific work.

Unraveling the photoelectrochemical properties of Bi₁₂NiO₁₉: a novel p-type photocatalyst for efficient visible-light-driven dye degradation AbstractThe growing concern over dye pollution and the need for efficient visible-light-responsive photocatalysts motivated this work to develop and evaluate a new bismuth-based oxide material. Bi₁₂NiO₁₉ was synthesized through a sol – gel technique employing citrate as a complexing...