Frontier Research Institute for Interdisciplinary Sciences
Tohoku University

To realize carbon-neutral society, various units consisting of society are forced to change. In particular, the chemical industries, which relies heavily on fossil resources for raw materials, must change their traditional system depending on fossil resources and realize a new route to synthesize chemical products from CO₂, waste plastics, and biomass, thereby creating a new carbon cycle. Our aim is to solve this challenge through the development of new nanomaterials, processes, and systems.

The distinctive feature of our research is the use of "supercritical fluids" for material and process control. In the supercritical region, the solvent properties can be drastically changed by a slight manipulation of temperature and pressure. For example, water and gas (CO₂), water and organic compounds (waste plastic, biomass, etc.), which normally separate into two phases, can form a homogeneous phase under the supercritical condition. Using the features of supercritical fluids, we have realized size and shape control of nanomaterials using organic-inorganic interactions, and have proposed new processes such as low-temperature reforming of hydrocarbons with less CO₂ emissions using nanomaterials.

In recent years, we have incorporated electrochemistry as a new driving force for mass transport/reaction and as an analytical method, and are attempting to achieve further controllability of supercritical nanomaterial synthesis, as well as higher efficiency and speed in supercritical processes. Our major goal is to realize a highly efficient process for converting hydrocarbons and CO₂ into chemical feedstock through supercritical process design that controls multi-scale structure of nanomaterials and that maximizes the advantage of nanomaterials, and to propose a promising future society, taking into consideration not only changes in material flow but also in human behavior.