Engineers find a new way to convert carbon dioxide into useful products

MIT News   March 27, 2024 For electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide with a small-molecule catalyst, the catalyst must be proximal to an electrode surface. Efforts to immobilize molecular catalysts on electrodes have been stymied by the need to optimize the immobilization chemistries on a case-by-case basis. Researchers at MIT applied DNA as a molecular-scale “Velcro” to investigate the tethering of three porphyrin-based catalysts to electrodes improving both the stability of the catalysts and their Faradaic efficiencies (FEs). Immobilization resulted in higher catalyst stability at relevant potentials. Lower overpotentials were required for the generation of CO. High FE for CO generation […]