Conspectus The electrocatalytic CO2 reduction reaction (CO2RR) to generate fixed forms of carbons that have commercial value is a lucrative avenue to ameliorate the growing concerns about the detrimental effect of CO2 emissions as well as to generate carbon-based feed chemicals, which are generally obtained from the petrochemical industry. The area of electrochemical CO2RR has seen substantial activity in the past decade, and several good catalysts have been reported. While the focus was initially on the rate and overpotential of electrocatalysis, it is gradually shifting toward the more chemically challenging issue of selectivity. CO2 can be partially reduced to produce several C1 products like CO, HCOOH, CH3OH, etc. before its complete 8e–/8H+ reduction to CH4. In addition to that, the low-valent electron-rich metal centers deployed to activate CO2, a Lewis acid, are prone to reduce protons, which are a substrate for CO2RR, leading to competing hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Similarly, the low-valent metal is prone to oxidation by atmospheric O2 (i.e., it can catalyze the oxygen reduction reaction, ORR), necessitating strictly anaerobic conditions for CO2RR. Not only is the requirement of O2-free reaction conditions impractical, but it also leads to the release of partially reduced O2 species such as O2 –, H2O2, etc., which are reactive and result in oxidative degradation of the catalyst. In this Account, mechanistic investigations of CO2RR by detecting and, often, chemically trapping and characterizing reaction intermediates are used to understand the factors that determine the selectivity in CO2RR. The spectroscopic data obtained from different intermediates have been identified in different CO2RR catalysts to develop an electronic structure selectivity relationship that is deemed to be important for deciding the selectivity of 2e–/2H+ CO2RR. The roles played by the spin state, hydrogen bonding, and heterogenization in determining the rate and selectivity of CO2RR (producing only CO, only HCOOH, or only CH4) are discussed using examples of both iron porphyrin and non-heme bioinspired artificial mimics. In addition, strategies are demonstrated where the competition between CO2RR and HER as well as CO2RR and ORR could be skewed overwhelmingly in favor of CO2RR in both cases.

Reduction of oxides and oxoanions of carbon and nitrogen are of great contemporary importance as they are crucial for a sustainable environment.

The ability to tune the selectivity of CO2 reduction by first-row transition metal-based complexes via the inclusion of second-sphere effects heralds exciting and sought-after possibilities. On the basis of the mechanistic understanding of CO2 reduction by iron porphyrins developed by trapping and characterizing the intermediates involved (J. Am. Chem. Soc.201513711214), a porphyrinoid ligand is envisaged to switch the selectivity of the iron porphyrins by reducing CO2 from CO to HCOOH as well as lower the overpotential to the process. The results show that the iron porphyrinoid designed can catalyze the reduction of CO2 to HCOOH using water as the proton source with 97% yield with no detectable H2 or CO. The iron porphyrinoid can activate CO2 in its Fe­(I) state resulting in very low overpotential for CO2 reduction in contrast to all reported iron porphyrins, which can reduce CO2 in their Fe(0) state. Intermediates involved in CO2 reduction, Fe­(III)–COOH and a Fe­(II)–COOH, are identified with in situ FTIR-SEC and subsequently chemically generated and characterized using FTIR, resonance Raman, and Mössbauer spectroscopy. The mechanism of the reaction helps elucidate a key role played by a closely placed proton transfer residue in aiding CO2 binding to Fe­(I), stabilizing the intermediates, and determining the fate of a rate-determining Fe­(II)–COOH intermediate.

Activation and reduction of N2 have been a major challenge to chemists and the focus since now has mostly been on the synthesis of NH3. Alternatively, reduction of N2 to hydrazine is desirable because hydrazine is an excellent energy vector that can release the stored energy very conveniently without the need for catalysts. To date, only one molecular catalyst has been reported to be able to reduce N2 to hydrazine chemically. A trinuclear T-shaped nickel thiolate molecular complex has been designed to activate dinitrogen. The electrochemically generated all Ni­(I) state of this molecule can reduce N2 in the presence of PhOH as a proton donor. Hydrazine is detected as the only nitrogen-containing product of the reaction, along with gaseous H2. The complex reported here is selective for the 4e–/4H+ reduction of nitrogen to hydrazine with a minor overpotential of ∼300 mV.

A variety of heme derivatives are pervasive in nature, having different architectures that are complementary to their function. Herein, we report the synthesis of a series of iron porphyrinoids, which bear electron-withdrawing groups and/or are saturated at the β-pyrrolic position, mimicking the structural variation of naturally occurring hemes. The effects of the aforementioned factors were systematically studied using a combination of electrochemistry, spectroscopy, and theoretical calculations with the carbon monoxide (CO) and nitric oxide (NO) adducts of these iron porphyinoids. The reduction potentials of iron porphyrinoids vary over several hundreds of millivolts, and the X−O (X = C, N) vibrations of the adducts vary over 10−15 cm −1 . Density functional theory calculations indicate that the presence of electron-withdrawing groups and saturation of the pyrrole ring lowers the π*-acceptor orbital energies of the macrocycle, which, in turn, attenuates the bonding of iron to CO and NO. A hypothesis has been presented as to why cytochrome c containing nitrite reductases and cytochrome cd 1 containing nitrite reductases follow different mechanistic pathways of nitrite reduction. This study also helps to rationalize the choice of heme a 3 and not the most abundant heme b cofactor in cytochrome c oxidase.