Project description
Optimising composites to lower atmospheric CO2 levels while fulfilling energy demand
Photocatalytic CO2 reduction to obtain sustainable solar fuels is a challenge for tackling both energy and environmental issues. Many photocatalysts, including inorganic semiconductors and 2D nanomaterials, are potential candidates for photoreduction of CO2, but still far from practical application due to several drawbacks. To address the demand for high-performance photocatalysts, the PhotoCatRed project will develop multinary N-doped graphene-based heterostructure composites to serve as strong, highly efficient photocatalysts for visible light reduction of CO2. The heterostructure composites will be specially designed to deal with today’s key challenges. They could be very useful photocatalysts in reducing CO2 under irradiation of visible light.
Objective
Energy shortage and environment pollution are two critical threats faced by the present society. Carbon dioxide (CO2), the well known greenhouse gas is a major cause of global warming but at same time it is also an abundant resource for hydrocarbon energy fuels. Photocatalytic CO2 reduction (PCO2R) into sustainable solar fuels is a highly enticing challenge for simultaneous settling of energy and environmental issues. So far, manifold photocatalysts including inorganic semiconductors, noble metal complexes, metal organic frameworks, 2D nanomaterials etc. have been demonstrated potential candidates for CO2 photo reduction. But the overall catalytic performance of the state of art materials is still far from practical application due to one or combined problems of low conversion efficiency, poor light harvesting, low stability, high electron-hole recombination rates, high cost and lack of product selectivity. Thus there is a steady demand for high performance photocatalysts preferably multinary heterostructure designs that can compensate for the shortcomings of the single components. The PCO2R project aims to develop novel multinary N-doped graphene based heterostructure composites decorated with titanium dioxide semiconductor, gold-copper bimetallic nanoalloys and/or transition metal dichalcogenides-copper nanoparticles as robust high efficiency photocatalysts for visible light reduction of CO2. The heterostructure composite is custom designed to overcome the major existing challenges and is anticipated to have great potential as a practically useful photocatalyst that can reduce CO2 under irradiation of visible light along with high product selectivity. The PCO2R project will confer significant scientific advances in the field of materials design, synthesis and catalysis strategies in addition to the knowledge transfer, training activities and long run societal interests.
Fields of science
- natural scienceschemical sciencescatalysisphotocatalysis
- engineering and technologynanotechnologynano-materialstwo-dimensional nanostructuresgraphene
- engineering and technologymaterials engineeringcomposites
- natural sciencesphysical scienceselectromagnetism and electronicssemiconductivity
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringenergy and fuels
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
MSCA-IF-EF-ST - Standard EFCoordinator
1000 Ljubljana
Slovenia