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  • Perspective
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Best practices for experiments and reporting in photocatalytic CO2 reduction

Nature Catalysis volume 6, pages 657–665 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

Visible-light-driven conversion of CO2 to fuels and valuable compounds has experienced tremendous activity in recent years, aiming at storing solar energy into chemical bonds using CO2 as a renewable feedstock, ultimately at massive scale. Despite these efforts, processes and catalytic systems are still at an early stage of development, with fundamental mechanistic challenges as pre-requisites for device design. In this context, collective efforts currently necessitate the exploration of a variety of approaches. On the other hand, an alignment of practices is required to ensure robustness, precision and accuracy of the results, as well as shared metrics and tools for advancing our understanding of the necessary processes. This Perspective aims to provide guidelines and a framework towards these objectives.

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Fig. 1: Scheme of a typical photochemical reactor.
Fig. 2: Emission spectra of various light sources.
Fig. 3: Typical gas chromatogram and mass spectrum of gaseous products from CO2 reduction.
Fig. 4: Flowchart for properly conducting light-driven CO2 catalytic reduction.

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Acknowledgements

D.S., M.R. and J.B. acknowledge funding (ANR-20-CE05-0019) received from Agence Nationale de la Recherche. M.R. acknowledges partial financial support from Institut Universitaire de France. E.R. acknowledges a consolidator grant (MatEnSAP, 682833) from the European Research Council. A.J.M. acknowledges support from the Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under grant DE-SC0012446. M.B. acknowledges a European Commission grant (DECADE, H2020-RIA-CE-NMBP-25 Program, grant no. 862030). T.-B.L. acknowledges support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21931007) and the National Key R&D Program of China (2022YFA1502902). O.I. acknowledges a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science KAKENHI grant (JP17H06440) in Scientific Research on Innovative Areas ‘Innovations for Light-Energy Conversion (I4LEC)’. F.M.T. acknowledges support from the Liquid Sunlight Alliance, which is supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Fuels from Sunlight Hub under award no. DE-SC0021266.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemical Sciences, University of Padova, Padova, Italy

    Marcella Bonchio

  2. INSTM UdR of Padova, Instituto per la Tecnologia delle Membrane, ITM-CNR, UoS of Padova, Padova, Italy

    Marcella Bonchio

  3. Laboratoire d’Electrochimie Moléculaire, Université Paris Cité, CNRS, Paris, France

    Julien Bonin, Debashrita Sarkar & Marc Robert

  4. Department of Chemistry, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan

    Osamu Ishitani

  5. Department of Chemistry, Graduate School of Advanced Science and Engineering, Hiroshima University, Hiroshima, Japan

    Osamu Ishitani

  6. Institute for New Energy Materials and Low Carbon Technologies, School of Materials Science & Engineering, Tianjin University of Technology, Tianjin, China

    Tong-Bu Lu

  7. Toyota Central R&D Labs., Inc., Nagakute, Aichi, Japan

    Takeshi Morikawa

  8. Department of Chemistry, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA, USA

    Amanda J. Morris

  9. Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Erwin Reisner

  10. Chemical Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Francesca M. Toma

  11. Institute of Functional Materials for Sustainability, Helmholtz Zentrum Hereon, Teltow, Germany

    Francesca M. Toma

  12. Liquid Sunlight Alliance, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Francesca M. Toma

  13. Institut Universitaire de France, Paris, France

    Marc Robert

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J.B. and M.R. built up the article based on the contribution of all the authors on specific sections, who also contributed to the discussion, reviewing and editing of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Julien Bonin or Marc Robert.

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Bonchio, M., Bonin, J., Ishitani, O. et al. Best practices for experiments and reporting in photocatalytic CO2 reduction. Nat Catal 6, 657–665 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41929-023-00992-7

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