Nanotechnology grants to convert carbon dioxide by emulating nature

Professor Nora De Leeuw (UCL Chemistry) has won £1.1 million from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to lead a project that aims to produce a catalytic reactor that can convert carbon dioxide into useful chemicals for applications such as fuel cells in laptops and mobile phones, by mimicking biological systems. The project is a collaboration between the UCL Departments of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Science & Technology Studies, and chemicals company Johnson Matthey. The team will build on their wide-ranging expertise to design and produce a prototype device that will apply novel iron-nickel-sulfide nano-catalysts for the activation and chemical modification of carbon dioxide at low voltages obtainable from solar energy. The team's design will take inspiration from biological systems that can carry out complex processes to convert carbon dioxide into biological material, and will exploit a wide range of computational and experimental chemistry techniques. Professor Richard Catlow, Dean of the UCL Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences and Co-investigator on the project, said: 'This is an exciting and important project which will develop new ways of activating carbon dioxide. It is a crossdisciplinary collaboration which will exploit UCL's expertise in synthesis, computation, nanoscience. electrochemistry, high-throughput techniques and chemical engineering.