Hot Paper: Leveraging Diamines to Unlock the Mn-MACHO Catalyst in the Reduction of CO2 to Methanol

Paper published, 27 January 2026: 

• https://onlinelibrary-wiley-com.ezproxy.universitetetioslo.no/doi/full/10.1002/anie.202524012 

Authors: Mohamed E. A. Safy, Raquel J. Rama, Niklas F. Both, David Balcells, Kathrin Junge, Matthias Beller, Ainara Nova. 

Findings

Diamines strongly improve the hydrogenation of CO₂ to methanol compared with monoamines. The main reason is that diamines make the amidation step more thermodynamically favorable. This reduces catalyst trapping in the metal-formate resting state and helps regenerate the active catalyst. 

The study also established a clear correlation between the amidation free energy, ΔG_amidation, and the experimental methanol productivity. Therefore, ΔG_amidation can be used as a descriptor to understand and predict the effect of different amine promoters. Using this insight, the authors showed that a Mn–MACHO catalyst can for the first time produce methanol from CO₂ without a Lewis acid co-catalyst when diamines are used. 

The best Mn system reached an experimental TON of about 45.2. Overall, the work shows that tuning the amine promoter is crucial for improving CO₂-to-methanol catalysis.

Funding

The project received funding from European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement N° 945371.