The researchers have brought us a step closer to the use of solar energy to convert carbon dioxide into liquid fuel and other valuable chemicals.
In a recently published publication in Natural catalysisThe researchers make a self-contained carbon carbon system (C2) producing system that combines the catalytic copper performance with perovskit, a material used in photovoltaic sun collectors.
This progress builds on over 20 years of research and brings the scientific community a step closer to replication of the productivity of a green leaf in nature.
This work is part of a major initiative, the Liquid Sunlight Alliance (Lisa), which is financed by the US Ministry.
“Nature was our inspiration,” says Peidong Yang, a senior scientist from the faculty in the Department of Materials Science Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a University of California, Berkeley Professor of Chemistry and Materials Science and Technology, which are involved in the published work.
“We first had to work on the individual components, but when we brought everything together and found that it was successful, it was a very exciting moment.”
To build a system that imitates photosynthesis, Yang and his team followed the natural processes that occur in the leaf of a plant. Every single component of the photosyntheticizing elements of a sheet had to be replicated and refined. The scientists used research through decades and used lead halogenid perovskit photo absorber to imitate the light-absorbing chlorophyll of a sheet. And inspired by enzymes that regulate photosynthesis in nature, they designed electrocatalysts made of copper that resemble tiny flowers.
Earlier experiments have successfully replicated photosynthesis through the use of biological materials, but this work included an inorganic material, copper. While copper selectivity is lower than biological alternatives, the inclusion of copper offers a more durable, more stable and longer -lasting option for the design of the artificial leaf system.
The work conducted by researchers in the Lisa project developed the cathode and anode components of the new device. In the instruments at the Molecular Foundry from Berkeley Lab, Yang's team enabled the device to integrate the device with metal contacts. During the experiments in Yang's laboratory, a solar simulator that imitates a constant bright sun was used to test the selectivity of the new device.
Earlier innovations between research groups enabled an organic oxidation reaction in the photoanode chamber and created C2 products in the Photocathode Chamber. This breakthrough created a realistic artificial leaf architecture in a device over the size of a stamps-es converts CO2 into a C2 molecule with only sunlight.
The C2 chemicals produced by this device are forerunner components for many industries that produce valuable products in our daily life – from plastic polymers to fuel for larger vehicles that cannot yet take a battery like an airplane. Building on this fundamental research milestone, Yang should now increase the efficiency of the system and expand the size of the artificial sheet in order to increase the scalability of the solution.
This work was supported by the Doe Office of Science.
Source: UC Berkeley