Vivek Polshettiwar

Vivek Vijayrao Polshettiwar (born 18 March 1979) is an Indian chemist who is a professor of chemistry at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.

He was awarded the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry prize for Green Chemistry in 2022.

He was the winner of the prestigious Falling Walls Prize in the Physical Sciences category.

In 2024, he was elected as a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore (FASc).

Vivek was born in a small village (Mangli) with no continuous power or running water, in Maharashtra, India.

His primary school had no buildings and most of his classes took place under trees or temporary sheds.

Doing well at school, he moved to a small, nearby town to complete his education.

Polshettiwar earned his master at Amravati University and doctorate at Jiwaji University in Gwalior.

After earning his doctorate, he moved to the ENSCM: Ecole Nationale Suprieure de chimie de Montpellier in France, where he spent one year as a postdoctoral researcher.

He was awarded an Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education Research Fellowship and joined the United States Environmental Protection Agency in 2007.

In 2009, Polshettiwar launched his independent career at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology.

He returned to India in 2013, where he started working on nanomaterials at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.

Professor Vivek Polshettiwar is a distinguished researcher dedicated to advancing nanomaterial development for catalysis, solar energy harvesting, and CO2 capture-conversion, with the overarching goal of addressing the urgent issue of climate change.

His research considers nanocatalysis: the design of sustainable, reactive, stable and selective catalysts.

He believes that the activity and kinetics of nanocatalysts can be influenced by tuning the morphology of the catalyst.

Polshettiwar has primarily focused on dendritic fibrous nanosilica, which has a fibrous structure that enhances the surface area on which reactions can occur.

His innovations in producing efficient dendritic fibrous nanosilica catalysts were made possible by altering the nanoscale properties of the material, specifically, the spacing between the nanostructures themselves.

These dendritic fibrous nanosilica catalysts can capture carbon dioxide and convert it to fuel and useful chemicals.

He has created amorphous aluminosilicates that can convert plastics to hydrocarbons at low temperature, contributing to a circular economy.

Notably, he has achieved remarkable progress in the development of next-generation nanocatalysts through precise morphological control of nanomaterials, particularly dendritic fibrous nanosilica (DFNS) (Nature Protocol 2019, 14, 2177-2204).

The uniqueness of DFNS lies in its fibrous structure, which imparts a significantly high surface area, accessible without the formation of conventional pores.

Since its discovery, DFNS has found diverse applications, including catalysis, photocatalysis, CO2 capture-conversion, RNA extraction from viruses, energy harvesting & storage, drug delivery, and more.

An exceptional achievement in his research involves the transformation of DFNS-based yellow gold to "black gold" by manipulating the size and gaps between gold nanoparticles.

This "black gold" acts like an artificial tree, using CO2, sunlight, and water to produce fuel.

This pioneering work, termed "Black (nano)Gold," holds significant promise as it opens the pathway for the development of "Artificial Trees" that can efficiently capture and convert CO2 into clean energy sources (Chemical Science, 2019, 10, 6694-6603).

Furthermore, Professor Polshettiwar's group demonstrated the strategic CO2 hydrogenation reactions using solar energy with a plasmonic black gold nickel catalyst.

The reaction showed exceptional CO production rates and followed a hot-electron-mediated mechanism, offering a sustainable approach to close the carbon cycle and combat climate change (ACS Nano, 2023, 17, 4526-4538; ACS Catalysis 2023, 13, 7395-7406).

Another significant contribution involves the role of "Defects in DFNS" for CO2 to fuel conversion, representing an entirely new concept in the field.

The defects alone acted as catalytic sites, eliminating the need for additional metal or complex organic ligands.

The catalytic activity for methane production even increased significantly after every regeneration cycle, elucidated through a detailed mechanistic study (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A 2020, 117, 6383; J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2023, 145, 8634).

In addition, Professor Polshettiwar's research extended to the development of "Acidic Amorphous Aluminosilicates (AAS)," exhibiting Brønsted acidic sites akin to zeolites, along with porous textural properties.

These AAS materials found applications in catalysis, plastic degradation, and CO2 to fuel conversion.

Their molecular-level understanding was achieved through conventional and DNP-enhanced SS NMR techniques (Nature Commun. 2020, 11, 3828).

Among his contributions is the development of a novel method for CO2 capture using lithium silicate nanosheets with outstanding capture capacity, kinetics, and stability, offering a potential solution to mitigate CO2 emissions within the reactor itself (Chem. Sci., 2021, 12, 4825).

In a recent breakthrough, they have demonstrated a groundbreaking method that involves bubbling air in water with a small amount of magnesium to generate fuel, specifically methane and hydrogen, along with the production of "green cement" (Chemical Science 2021, 12, 5774).

Notably, this process does not require the application of heat, electricity, or light energy; it solely relies on the utilization of water and magnesium within a few minutes.

This innovative protocol is capable of producing hydrogen at an impressive rate of 940 liters per kilogram of magnesium, which represents a substantial improvement compared to hydrogen production solely through the reaction of magnesium with water.

The significance of this advancement is underscored by the fact that it is nearly 420 times more efficient in hydrogen generation.

The simplicity and efficiency of this method hold significant promise for a wide range of applications, with implications not only for hydrogen production but also for the development of environmentally friendly and resource-efficient materials like "green cement."

Remarkably, Professor Polshettiwar pioneered the research field of "Fibrous Nanosilica," which has garnered significant global interest, with over 150 research groups worldwide exploring this area.