Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

The conversion of carbon dioxide and water to fuel in artificial systems requires efficient coupling of light absorbers and catalysts, and assembly of the components into hierarchical structures to close the photocatalytic cycle. Recent breakthroughs in the embodiment of molecular photoactive components in ultrathin oxide layers, and the introduction of new materials approaches for interfacial charge transfer have led to substantially improved coupling of chromophores and catalysts. These advances are accelerating the exploration of novel architectures for reducing CO2 by H2O in scalable, single integrated photosystems to reach the high power efficiencies recently demonstrated with photovoltaic-assisted approaches.