In this project funded by the Chemical Catalysis Program of the National Science Foundation, Professor Kanan and his students will develop and study heterogeneous electrocatalysts for the conversion of CO2 into fuels and synthetic building blocks. The research will focus on a new class of catalysts called "oxide-derived metal nanoparticles". These catalysts are prepared by electrochemically reducing bulk metal oxide precursors to form metallic nanoparticles, which exhibit dramatically improved energetic efficiency for CO2 reduction and resistance to deactivation. The surface structures will be probed by a combination of electrochemical techniques, spectroscopic methods and high-resolution electron microscopy, which are complemented by electrokinetic measurements to illuminate mechanistic features of CO2 reduction. Concurrent with their experimental activities, researchers in this project will perform high-level comparative analyses of electrochemical, photoelectrochemical and chemical approaches to CO2 recycling.
The longstanding reliance on fossil fuels as the principal energy source for society has boosted the atmospheric CO2 concentration to an unprecedented level, which necessitates recycling CO2 into fuels using renewable energy inputs. The proposed research addresses one of the greatest scientific hurdles to this vision: the development of energy-efficient and selective CO2 reduction catalysts. These catalysts could be incorporated into an electrolytic device that produces carbon-based fuels when powered by a photovoltaic or wind turbine.
