University of Ottawa

Purpose

Our reliance on fossil fuels as an energy source has now produced unsustainable levels of CO2 in the atmosphere with catastrophic environmental consequences. To address this issue, technologies are being developed to transform CO2 from the atmosphere into useful fuels. Major progress was recently achieved with the development of plasmon-enhanced electrocatalysts, where visible light is used to drive and tune the electrocatalytic process, thus improving the transformation of CO2 into fuels. The recipient proposes a new technology where new fabrications methods using laser machining, high-speed replication processes, and chemical nanoparticles synthesis, are used to create catalysts that are cheap and active under visible light illumination. The project will involve state-of-the art characterization techniques, experiments, and simulations, to optimize these new catalyst materials for the transformation of CO2 into useful fuels.