M.Sc. Vanessa Ramm
Joined the team in March 2022.
Graduated at TUM in 2022 under the guidance of Roland A. Fischer.
Room No.: 4035
Tel.: +49 89 289 54129
E-mail: vanessa.ramm[at]tum.de
Research Topic: Photocatalytic Oxidations in Molecular Catalyst-Metal-Organic Framework-Hybrid Assemblies
Today’s society faces the central challenge of fulfilling a steadily increasing energy demand by establishing efficient sustainable energy supplies and resolve the global energy and climate crisis. Taking inspiration from nature, artificial photosynthesis provides a promising platform to sustainably generate solar fuels by splitting water and reducing CO2.
In this context, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) constitute an auspicious platform to build efficient photocatalysts, enabling photoinduced electron excitation, charge separation and migration to active sites and, ultimately, chemical conversion. Photocatalytic reduction reactions towards high-value products (e.g., CO2-to-hydrocarbon, H2 evolution) have been widely researched and successful enhancement of catalytic performance has been shown in MOFs, also by our group. However, sustainability of these processes has been so far defeated by the requirement of sacrificial electron donors as electron source. This can be resolved by coupling them to sustainable photocatalytic oxidations, resulting in atom economy and a closed redox cycle.
Thus, my PhD project focuses on establishing efficient photocatalytic oxidations with molecular catalysts-MOF-hybrid assemblies. Here, establishing high catalytic performances will require devising MOF materials amenable for heterogenization of molecular catalysts, getting insights into underlying elementary mechanisms at integrated catalytic sites, as well as fundamental photophysical processes for in-depth understanding.
Selected Publications
Analysis of metal–organic framework-based photosynthetic CO2 reduction, P. M. Stanley, V. Ramm, R. A. Fischer, J. Warnan, Nat. Synth. 2024.
Photocatalytic CO2-to-syngas Evolution with Molecular Catalyst Metal-organic Framework Nanozymes, P. M. Stanley, A. Y. Su, V. Ramm, P. Fink, C. Kimna, O. Lieleg, M. Elsner, J. A. Lercher, B. Rieger, J. Warnan, R. A. Fischer, Adv. Mater. 2023, 35, 2207380.