Researchers develop a method for photo-mechanochemical synthesis of nanographenes in the solid-state

Professor Lars Borchardt’s team at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, has succeeded in carrying out light-driven chemical reactions in the solid-state without resorting heavily to solvents. The team stated that this provides a sustainable alternative to established synthesis methods. Light is considered the ideal driving force of chemical reactions as it’s cheap, available in abundance and produces no waste. This is why light-driven, i.e. photochemical reactions are highly attractive for the production of chemical compounds. However, they are usually carried out in huge amounts of solvents that are often toxic and generate hazardous waste in enormous quantities. Solid-state photochemical reactions without solvents could present an alternative. However, they have hardly been feasible so far, as they could only be mixed insufficiently and so it was possible to scale them up to relevant quantities.