This presentation features recently developed methods for investigating the complex interplay of reagents and catalysts in light-driven chemical processes. New 96-well photo-reactors were developed to massively parallelize and accelerate the quantification of photocatalytic rates and turnover numbers of photocatalytic alcohol reforming processes, photoredox transformations, and light-driven metal reductions. Thousands of reaction conditions, catalysts, and chromophores were investigated with this new infrastructure built from single-board computers, 3-D printers, laser cutters and other techniques embraced by the Maker culture. Modern data science and machine learning techniques were used to pin-point trends in the structure-activity databases. A special focus was placed on the highly popular [Ir(C^N)<sub>2</sub>(N^N)]<sup>+</sup> family of luminophores when libraries produced from dozens of cyclometalating C^N and 1,2-diimine N^N ligands were explored and creating unprecedented numbers of structurally and electronically highly diverse photocatalyst structures. Thousands of rates and turnover numbers for the photogeneration of hydrogen were measured using this library as documented in the Figure below.

Automated and parallelized discovery of structure-activity relationships in light-driven chemical reactions with solar fuels applications

ACS Spring 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.