CO₂ Mitigation Accelerated by Photons

Urgent action is needed to revert carbon emissions and global warming. One strategy to do so involves the capture and conversion of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO₂). Using renewable electricity, water, and a catalyst, CO₂ can be recycled into useful materials such as fuels or widely used chemical precursors.

This process entails breaking water and CO₂ molecules and assembling the resulting building blocks into the desired product (e.g. ethanol). The catalyst speeds up the desired reaction, locking the reaction intermediates at the right time at the right place, and driving electron and proton transfer to specific sites.

Despite decades of research, the still limited understanding of this process precludes achieving sufficiently rapid, selective, energy-efficient, and stable CO₂ conversion. This is holding back the feasibility of this technology.

We explore the use of photons to shed light on this process, helping understand the various mechanisms involved: from the atomic to the macroscale level; from femtoseconds to thousands of hours; during reaction. Aided by computational models and AI, we then use this knowledge to guide the design of nanostructured catalysts and systems that achieve the desired performance metrics.

We work at the frontier between new science and emerging technology. Our broader interests span novel photon-enabled chemistries as well as the use of photonics and nanomaterials for energy storage applications.

Position(s) available:  The group has opportunities for outstanding Master students, Ph.D. students, and postdocs. For more information, please reach Prof. F. Pelayo García de Arquer. Information on application procedures can be found on the ICFO jobs website.