Electro- and Photo-Induced Catalysis in Papers, "EPIC"

Purpose and goal

Hydrogen peroxide is a green chemical that rapidly is becoming accepted as an ecological oxidant for the chemical industry and agriculture, and also is recognized as a possible fuel source. This project has taken major steps in the direction of a sustainable future of hydrogen peroxide. We have developed ways to use sunlight to generate peroxide, and shown how it can be created using lignin, a byproduct of forestry. We have shown ways that electricity can be used to directly synthesize peroxide on-demand, and come up with novel ways to generate electricity using peroxide fuel cells.

Expected results and effects

The principles of peroxide synthesis using sustianable on-demand methods has direct application in agriculture, forestry, paper-making, and biomedical applications. Our work also established organic electronic materials as useful for making direct fuel cells which convert the chemical energy that is stored in hydrogen peroxide into electricity.

Planned approach and implementation

This project was carried out as a partnership between the laboratory of organic electronics (LOE) at Linköping University, and the KTH royal institute of technology in Stockholm, and also the company Ahlstrom-Munksjö. Collaboration was vital to combine the unique organic electronic materials experience from LOE with the forest-based materials know-how at KTH and A-M. The center of gravity of the ideas developed in this project will shift more towards A-M in the future as we aim to bring these ideas to a more mature stage towards commercialization.