The progressive incorporation of renewable biomass resources, including carbohydrates, lignin, polysaccharides, etc. in the chemical industry is a game changing transition towards building a circular and sustainable chemical supply chain. However, controlling the selective conversion of these polyfunctional substrates is a grand challenge, which is currently limiting the great potential of biomass transformation to high value-added specialty chemicals such as bio-based products.

We have managed to develop a new process based on the synergy between a solid catalyst and sonochemistry, called sonocatalysis. The core of this approach relies on generating highly reactive radicals via the rapid cavitation under high-frequency sonochemical activation and simultaneously transferring them to the catalyst surface to control the selectivity of biomass reactions. Benefiting from its distinctive features, sonocatalysis allows for fine-tuning the reaction selectivity for the transformation of biomass-derive feedstocks to high value-added specialty chemicals and access to chemicals that are generally not reachable by conventional routes.