Today Phil’s co-first author paper on carbon dioxide electroreduction catalysts was published in Nature! This catalyst converts CO2 into carbon monoxide, a building block for synthetic fuels, with the aid of renewable electricity. Phil lead the computational investigation which helped design the new catalyst. This work utilizes a new concept in catalysis, the field-induced reagent concentration (FIRC) effect. Here gold nanoneedles generate high local electric fields, due to their high curvature, which in turn attract CO2 for further reaction.
This marks Phil’s first major contribution in the Sargent lab and his first Nature publication. This catalyst developed here is now patent pending.
You can download a copy of the paper here.
