Episode 21 of the Modern Chemistry podcast features Professor Vivek Polshettiwar (https://www.linkedin.com/in/prof-vivek-polshettiwar-40a5837/), interviewed by Purnima Parkhi (https://www.linkedin.com/in/purnima-parkhi-9386306/).
Professor Polshettiwar is based at the Prestigious Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) (https://www.tifr.res.in). Prof Polshettiwar was educated at a number of institutions across India, before he moved to France, the United States, and Saudi Arabia. In 2013 he joined the TIFR.
Prof Vivek is a Leading researcher in a nanotechnology. He runs a nano-catalysis Laboratory in TIFR, integrated into the Division of Chemical Sciences (DCS). He uses principles of nanochemistry to make new materials which have widespread applications.
Prof Vivek has published many papers in international journals. His NANOCAT group (https://www.nanocat.co.in/ ) works on CO2 capture and conversion to tackle climate change through the development of novel nanomaterials for catalysis and solar energy harvesting
Prof. Vivek is a Fellow of the royal society of chemistry, UK. He has been rewarded an “Asian Rising Stars” at 15th Asian Chemical Congress (ACC), Singapore, by Nobel Laureate Professor Ei-ichi Negish . He has been recently awarded the 2022 IUPAC-CHEMRAWN VII Prize for Green Chemistry in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the field of green chemistry.
Terms used
If you’re not familiar with some of the terms used in this discussion – some key ones are described here for your reference:
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This transcript was produced by rev.com and has not been checked for accuracy.
Paul Orange (00:10):
Hello and welcome to the Modern Chemistry Podcast with your host, Paul Orange.
(00:14):
Hello and welcome to the Modern Chemistry Podcast. I'm your host for today's show, Paul Orange. So I'm recording this introduction whilst I'm traveling, and that's not the only unusual thing about this edition of the show. Rather than me interviewing our guest this time, my colleague, Purnima Parkhi, interviewed Professor Vivek Polshettiwar, who is based at the very prestigious Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.
(00:43):
I'll put a little bit more information in the show notes about Professor Polshettiwar's background, but he's a man who was educated in India, has spent time working overseas in France, the United States and Saudi Arabia before joining the TIFR. His research is focused on nanotechnology and in particular nanocatalysis, looking at challenges such as CO2 captures to tackle climate change, and therefore I think that this is a really nice companion episode to our discussion with Amanda Morris, which you should be able to find in our back catalog if you haven't already had chance to listen to that.
(01:22):
So I think that's enough from me. I shall let you listen directly to the discussion between Purnima and Professor Polshettiwar and I'll be back at the end.
Purnima Parkhi (01:30):
Welcome Professor Vivek Polshettiwar to this podcast series from H.E.L. First question is why did you choose to work in the area of catalysis?
Vivek Polshettiwar (01:43):
Okay, thanks Purnima for this opportunity to discuss our work with you guys. So why catalysts? So if one look at most of the production of things, artificial production of the things from basic chemicals, then you need a catalyst. If you want to convert, say CO2 into some useful chemicals, then you need a catalyst because otherwise without a catalyst, converting CO2 into any chemicals is just really impossible, you need a huge amount of energy.
(02:13):
So what we are trying to do is we're trying to develop these catalytic material which will then activate the CO2 and at the same time the same material will activate hydrogen, which we want to add into the CO2, green hydrogen coming from water. And then the same material will also have the ability to harvest the solar photon. So that means it's more like artificial photosynthesis, the way it trees does. They take a CO2, water and solar photon then and convert it to different chemicals and fuels, so we're trying to develop a similar thing in the form of artificial catalytic material.
Purnima Parkhi (02:48):
Professor Vivek, please tell us little about your work in environmental problem solving using nanochemistry.
Vivek Polshettiwar (02:55):
Yeah, so see, one of the most serious problems that our planet is facing is the climate change. We can experience this now changing the weather pattern, heat wave somewhere, cold weather somewhere, very heavy rain. So clearly the climate change is upon us and we need to really find a way to stop the climate change. Now the question is, what is the main cause of climate change? And the answer is very straightforward. It's the carbon dioxide, the increased concentration of the carbon dioxide. Obviously there's several other greenhouse gases, but CO2 is the key.
(03:27):
Now, if one can find a way where I can capture all the CO2 from the environment, that's the first way. If I reduce the concentration of CO2 from the environment, problem is solved ideally. But then once I store it somewhere, then what do I do with that very large amount of CO2? So the perfect way is I capture the CO2 and then convert that CO2 into useful chemicals and fuels. Most of the thing that you see around is made up of a carbon, so if one can make all these things coming from the CO2, then CO2 is no more a problem, it is actually your source of a carbon. So that's what we're trying to do in this environmental science, we're trying to find out the ways where I capture and then convert the CO2 into useful chemicals and fuels, and for that you need catalytic material.
Purnima Parkhi (04:14):
So how you design those small materials?
Vivek Polshettiwar (04:18):
Okay, yeah, so that's really a important question. How do we design it? What is the hypothesis? So there are three things that you need for a material to be catalytically active for a CO2 conversion. One is you really want to, can we solve the CO2? CO2 is linear stabilized molecule, very stable molecule. So what we do, we can solve the CO2 onto the surface that allows you to bend or stretch the CO2 molecule and reduce the activation energy barrier that is required for CO2 to convert into different chemicals. That's a first step. So you need a material which can solve the CO2.
(04:51):
Same catalytic material also need to dissociate the hydrogen or split water so that I can then add the proton into the CO2. And the same material should also has the ability to harvest the solar energy because I want to use solar energy to carry out the CO reduction reaction.
(05:07):
So that's how then we come up with a hypothesis, okay, let us take a semiconducting material which has the ability to harvest the photon, solar photons, and use them for catalysis. Let's use plasmonic material, plasmonic metals like gold or silver, who is also known to harvest the solar photons and at the same time they have this ability to also create some sort of a polarizing electric field, which allows you to then also activate the CO2 and other reactor molecule, which then allows you to then convert CO2 into useful chemicals with a minimum energy require. Otherwise the process will not be sustainable.
Purnima Parkhi (05:44):
So these are called as nanomaterials?
Vivek Polshettiwar (05:49):
Yeah, all of them are nano. So one can ask why nano and why not a bulk material? So bulk material so has the properties, but they are not that active. Old days all the materials were actually bulk material that is used in catalysis. But then we learn that when you convert those bulk material into an nanomaterial, say example, gold is very shiny yellow color, but as soon as I convert that gold into different particle size, I can get a red color, pink color, blue color. In fact we recently made a gold which is a black color.
(06:16):
So you have a ability to tune the properties of these materials by just converting them into an nano size. I just give you the example of color, it could be a melting point, it could be their electronic properties, their magnetic properties, several thing that can be changed by simply converting the bulk material into the nano material, and that's why we try to use nano material to develop these catalysis system.
Purnima Parkhi (06:42):
You just mentioned about energy sources. Can you mention about energy sources and your results for the choices you made?
Vivek Polshettiwar (06:49):
Yeah, so energy source should be renewable. So what is the best energy source that is available to us? Solar energy. So I think the ideal scenario is to harvest the solar energy and then use that energy to convert CO2 to chemicals. See we are already using solar panels and converting solar energy into electricity, but we also know the issue with the solar electricity is the storage, not the production. So we don't have enough amount of lithium that will provide all of those lithium and batteries and let you use the electricity.
(07:24):
Then the other technique to use these solar energy as our energy source is converting water into hydrogen using this electrochemical water streaming, and then hydrogen economy is now a new trend that everyone is trying to achieve and Indian government is also invest a huge amount of money to produce the hydrogen. Obviously we should do that, but the problem with hydrogen is not the generation, but it's the storage. Again, storing the hydrogen is challenge, still a challenge.
(07:51):
So then what could be the solution? What could be the best solution? And well the way we think is, you harvest the solar photon directly and use some of those photons to convert water into hydrogen and don't store that hydrogen. You take that hydrogen and add into the CO2, again using the solar photom. So that means you are ideally storing solar energy into the CO2 and converting that CO2 into say methane, ethanol, and all of these are chemicals that we are really using every day, CNG is nothing but a methane. We can use methane and ethanol and all these chemicals. So it solves the problem of energy generation, it solves the problem of energy storage and it also solves the problem of CO2. So in one go you are solving three challenges of the environment.
Purnima Parkhi (08:38):
Okay. So are these materials scalable?
Vivek Polshettiwar (08:41):
Yeah, that's another challenging question. So the way we do in our lab is all at a milligram scale or the gram scale. But at least in our lab, the way we synthesize, we use these solution phase techniques, like mixing different chemicals using very simplified reactor. So the ideal scenario, all of these materials are scalable. In fact, we had one material called dendritic fibrous nanosilica, DFNS, which we invented around 10 years ago and now 150 researcher around the world are using this.
(09:10):
So we showed that it is of scale. We started from milligram scale and then now in the lab we can make around 40 grams scale, which is a huge jump and if any industry take over that, they will then surely can make it in a kgs and tons of scale. So it's possible to upscale.
Purnima Parkhi (09:29):
And is it better and more scalable than planting more trees? That is will these act as a artificial trees?
Vivek Polshettiwar (09:35):
It will. See obviously the best way is to just plant as many trees as we can and that should actually solve the problem. But now we know that we don't have that amount of free land where you can plant the trees. We should obviously plant as many trees as we can, but there are lots of studies and modeling people have done where you can't just plant the trees and solve the problem because there is a very limited space, people are struggling to even have a space for living.
(10:00):
So that means now you need to support the nature by producing something called artificial trees which don't need a land to plant. So again, artificial trees is a fancy word, but it is actually these catalytic nanomaterial which behaves like a tree. They take the CO2, they take solar photon, they take water and use methane, ethinol, all different type of chemicals, exactly like a trees, but they don't need the land. So this is the concept of artificial trees actually.
Purnima Parkhi (10:27):
Okay. How far you have reached in your quest and what milestones were achieved in this process?
Vivek Polshettiwar (10:34):
Okay. So we are working in a two different direction. We're trying to make a catalytic material which either can be used in a CO2 conversion process using thermal energy, the typical conversion process, or using the solar energy, photocatalysis. So in our lab we make everything, obviously at a small scale, but our objective is to design the new materials. We want to have some fundamental breakthroughs that allows us to really commercialize the system. So we discovered black gold, we discovered DFNS, we discovered lithium silicate nanosheets, we have recently shown magnesium can convert CO2 into chemicals. Several different example, which are the first time in the literature.
(11:21):
Now whether these can be really translated into the commercial technology, so that is something missing in this country. So you cannot ask the fundamental researcher to also do engineering, upscale, producer, designer, reactor and start industry. Just impossible, that is not the expertise of a fundamental researcher. But how the other countries are doing, they have some sort of a technology transfer department where they bring the fundamental researchers, they bring the engineers, different experts and they come together, work together, and then they build the commercial viable processes, which is missing, which is unfortunately missing. If we can somehow bring that culture in our country, then it's possible to then convert several of these fundamental discoveries into commercially viable processes.
Purnima Parkhi (12:12):
Just now we mention about your one research work that is your research group has pioneered their own research field, fibrous nanosilica based catalysis and more than 150 groups worldwide are now working in this field that you started. So we would like you to expand more on this for our listeners.
Vivek Polshettiwar (12:27):
Yes. So the DNFS, which is ideal nanosilica having this fibrous morphology, that's why we call them the fibrous nanosilica. So to design any heterogeneous catalyst system, you need a two component. One is a high surface area which acts as a support, a network, and then another is a active site which could be metal, nanoparticle enzyme, some organic molecules.
(12:49):
So then we decided to develop a material which should have a very high surface area so that I can do lots of active site. And the second question that we ask is that high surface area should be accessible. If there are lots of report before our material where the high surface area is because of the ports, but then accessibility of those ports, the surface area in the ports is really limited. Whereas the way we made these silica is a fiber, it's like a marigold flower, and each of petals of the flower provides you the surface. And that is accessible, it's open from all the site. And because of that, now this becomes one of the most popular silica support in the field of a catalysis. It is not only using catalysis and capture, but people are using it for energy harvesting, storage, drug delivery, in any exception of these viruses and RNAs from the viruses.
(13:42):
So I think this is one of our proud moment. In general, the trend in India is that there is some hot topic somewhere in Europe or USA and then everybody just run behind that, that topic. Could be a morph or a CNT, graphenes, you see in our case it's other way around. We develop our own research field which people from other countries are following. So that I think that's one of the achievement of the-
Purnima Parkhi (14:09):
It is really great achievement. Yes, yes. So connected to this only, how do you think entire scientific community has changed since the beginning of your career? Has it become more connected, more international? Has it become more difficult or has it become more easier?
Vivek Polshettiwar (14:23):
It has becoming more connected. Nowadays almost all the research, high quality research at least, need to be done in collaboration. No single person has all the expertise. I have expertise in making materials and in exploring them for catalysis and do some institute studies to understand the action mechanism. But there are also other technique like say Solution MR. I don't know solution MR, but if I can collaborate with the solution MR expert, then I get more insight about the surface of my catalysts. There are these TEM technique, institute TEM, there are XPS techniques which allows you to understand the material even in more depth and that again gives us idea designing a new material.
(15:02):
So it's always a collaborative. If you see say most of our papers, you will always see a collaboration either in India or outside world. So I think all the field are moving towards the international collaboration.
(15:15):
In terms of doing the sign, whether it's easy or hard, obviously I'm a lucky guy, I'm a TIFR, so our institute is one of the great institute, we get a full support and that makes the thing easy. But if we compare the facility and infrastructure that international institute have, good institute how from I came from KAUST in Saudi Arabia, then if I compare with them, we are very poor. We are nowhere. If I compare even with the KAUST, which is a very new institute in Saudi Arabia, with the TIFR, the TIFR is nowhere in terms of support, in terms of facility, in terms of project, we lack behind anything. The people who are using these TM technique, they're 10 years ahead of us. People who are using SSMR technique, they're 10 year ahead of us and we are still struggling to get some basic instrumentation here where the same faculty my age in that institute having almost everything. And at the end of the day you have to compete with them for doing a good science. So that makes the life difficult.
Purnima Parkhi (16:23):
Like you said, you are leading the team of many researchers. So is it leading the team makes difference, definitely. So how you are managing your team, we would like to listen from you. You are leadership.
Vivek Polshettiwar (16:41):
Yeah. So I think that's another very important aspect in some area. And again, I feel I'm very lucky guy here because in TIFR we get best of the best student. I think some of the best student of India joined TIFR, so not all, but I guess 90% of our students are extremely good and that helps in doing a high quality research and that helps also in you learning how to train them or how to lead them. So that is never a problem in TIFR and our TIFR culture is very different than any other institute here. Me and my student are like friends, there's no such a bossism or something like that. We work, we discuss, we have lots of these group meeting, we openly discuss the science. We argue, if you are a student, you are reading more, you are very fresh with your ideas. So we try to discuss more and more with the student and then come up with the hypothesis, come up with a new plan.
Purnima Parkhi (17:43):
What are the new areas in chemistry you would like to venture and what role do you see for catalysis in our future?
Vivek Polshettiwar (17:50):
So right now we are focusing on these CO2 capture and conversion, but other two areas that I think we like to contribute, one is the waste plastic. Again, waste plastic is one of the very serious issue that is ignored. And then we should ask this question that how do I convert this waste into wealth? What do I do so that all that waste plastic become some sort of a useful chemicals and consumables? And that can be achieved by again developing a catalytic process which will convert all these polymeric waste plastic back to a basic chemicals. And I again use those basic chemicals to make a polymer or something else. So it's a cyclic thing.
(18:30):
Another project that we want to work is fertilizers. Urea. Urea is one of the key thing for country like India for farmers, but production of UEA produces large amount of CO2, huge. This is one of the process, because Urea needs ammonia and ammonia is around 1% of the total CO2 of our planet, which is a huge amount of CO2. So we are trying to find a way where, I haven't started but that's another area that we want to really think of where can I just take a nitrogen from the environment, react with hydrogen and using our catalytic system, using the solar light and convert those into ammonia, obviously at a excellent productivity. And if that is achieved, and again you get a urea which is cheaper without emitting the CO2, so it solves the two problem in one group.
Purnima Parkhi (19:26):
Any expectations you have organizations from organizations developing innovative equipment and solutions for research in nanochemistry and catalysis?
Vivek Polshettiwar (19:35):
Yes. I think if I look at the, I'm just thinking this at the India level, this is one of the bigger challenge that most of the instrumentation is coming from outside. We don't really develop the instrument here. Obviously government came up with this plan of buying the instrument, you need to have Indian component in every instrument buying. I think the objective was good, but the way it was handled was wrong because if there's no instrument in the country, how can you have a five or 10% component?
(20:07):
What government or what we have to do is we have to start some independent research institute whose job is to build the new instrumentation. I think TISR do have those, but they're never able to build anything. So that is important, right? Instrument building is important.
(20:23):
Then in the field, in our field, the dream instrument for me is, we make lots of these nanoparticles, but we can't really see them how they're growing. And most of the TM techniques are post synthetic, you take them material and then go to the TM or the CM and then you see it. Obviously nowadays there are some institute who liquid TM, but they're still very fresh state. But if we can really have some sort of instrumentation which allows me to see this growth in a very clear way, I think that will really add into our understanding about photon synthesis, which is a key in designing a new catalytic system.
Purnima Parkhi (21:07):
Any good message for fellow researchers and young scholars venturing into this field?
Vivek Polshettiwar (21:13):
I think the climate change is one of the very serious issue, and for me the solution is in science and technology. There's no other solution that people say, oh, let us replace all the fossil fuels by hydrogen or all solar, it's not going to happen. Not going to happen for at least another few decades. So that means we're going to burn versus where we're going to emit large amount of CO2 and the globe is going to warm. So that means every good researcher, engineer, they have to put more and more efforts in designing a processes which allows them to capture the CO2, allows them to convert the CO2 using solar energy. I think this is the area which is still not able to really achieve what society is required.
(21:58):
And look at this area, most of other fundamental research, you try to understand what is happening around. You observe and you understand. Here it is other way around, you already know the problem. The problem is I need to find a way to capture and convert CO2, that means now you have to synthesize something, you have to build something from zero. So you have to have some idea from your brain and come up with some new material which will solve your problem. So it's not about observation, understand it is about we already observe, understand that it's a problem, now it's about the solution. And that is extremely challenging. That's extremely challenging. Synthetic chemistry is extremely challenging as compared to any other science. So I think this is one of the very exciting field for a student researcher to jump in and contribute.
Purnima Parkhi (22:43):
Any funding about you want to mention, how do you get funding for the research?
Vivek Polshettiwar (22:52):
Yeah, again, the good part is at TISR we have a good funding. But again, if I have to compare this with some of the best institutes across the world, KAUST, then we are not best. Our funding is very, very limited, very poor I would say. I think we need to invest large, large amount of funding in the field, especially the field of catalysis, gridlock CO2, caption conversion, which is... Look, you cannot invest peanut and ask for the diamonds. You have to invest at least a Google and ask for the diamond. So this is a problem. I think this is a very serious problem that people generally try to run behind these hot topics. Somebody said hydrogen economy, everybody's behind hydrogen economy, nobody really plan. Obviously you need a hydrogen, but can that alone solve the problem? No, it can't. Same with the solar panels.
(23:41):
So I think in this field there need to be a bigger vision for solving the problem. And I think there need to be huge, huge investment in the field of CO2 capture conversion, which is idea at this stage is very poor if I look at the country level.
Purnima Parkhi (24:00):
And I would like to ask you, what is the ratio of women and men or researchers in general in scientific community?
Vivek Polshettiwar (24:09):
Yeah. So obviously unfortunately it is poor. The women scientists are less, almost all the departments and almost all the...
Purnima Parkhi (24:19):
Is it a situation in India or everywhere?
Vivek Polshettiwar (24:24):
It's everywhere. It's everywhere. But the strange thing about that, I'm in India for the last 10 years, most of the time we have more female student than the male student or maybe similar. But then somehow that is not ending up into the system or it is like this thing has changed in last 10 years possibly and maybe another five to 10 years you will have more and more female faculty. That's what I feel. Because all good days we know how the things are, I think it's not a fault of any academia or it's not a scientific fault, I think it's our cultural fault, our cultural issues where we always try to push the male versus as a female, which changed, I guess. This culture in our country has changed in last 10 years or 20 years. So you will see now, I think that change that happened in our culture, you see that impact onto having more female candidate or woman candidate as a faculty in different institutions.
Purnima Parkhi (25:18):
And after completing this particular research in TIFR or any other place in catalysis, how far are the job opportunities is in industries?
Vivek Polshettiwar (25:28):
Yeah, so job opportunity is obviously limited in India, at least in the field of catalysis, because if you look at most of these chemical electrochemical industries, and I have lots of friends in these industry, they don't really do R and D, they don't really do research. They are more engineer, just produce. And I think one of the very senior researcher in the industry told me that almost all the catalysts that industry use in India are all inputted. They're never able to build a single catalyst. Maybe few, but majority of the catalysts that is in use are coming from the outside world. So clearly there is a big potential, big scope for the student who are doing the research in the field of catalysis to jump in, but obviously the Indian industry has to open up and put their money in doing the research and developing their own product and own technology.
(26:24):
This is the best example of part with money to part rather than just making the thing here. We don't only want to make you innovate in India, then make in India. That's the only way we can survive. So that is something, the Indian industries are not that great in this thing. The majority of the big, big industry, they don't really invest in the science and in the research and even in the development work. I have done some discovery environment research, now it's job of industry to come collaborate with me, invest some of the money and see whether that can be taken to a pilot plan, if it works can be taken to commercial scale. So that part that I said previously also, it's missing.
Purnima Parkhi (27:01):
Thank you, Dr. Vivek. It was a very pleasure to talking to you and we are hopeful that this episode will catalyze many minds. We wish you the very best in your future scientific quest in nanochemistry and catalysis. Thank you.
Vivek Polshettiwar (27:12):
Thank you very much, Purnima.
Paul Orange (27:16):
Okay, I hope you all enjoyed that. Great discussion there and I think some really keen insights from Professor Polshettiwar about the work he's doing, the impact it has and how he works with his colleagues.
(27:30):
As always, if you've enjoyed the show, please subscribe to the feed in whatever podcast app you listen. And if you enjoyed the show, also give us a rating because that will help other people to find us.
(27:45):
As always, we're desperately interested in finding great guests to have on the show so if you know somebody, drop us a line or please feel free to nominate yourselves, we won't tell anybody we promise. Contact details can be found in the show notes.
(28:01):
But until our next show, thanks very much for listening and I'll catch you next time on the Modern Chemistry Podcast.
(28:13):
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