1. using optical techniques to study the reaction mechanisms of carbon dioxide reduction
2. leveraging high-throughput screening methods and machine intelligence to accelerate catalytic material discovery
3. testing the efficiencies of materials to perform carbon dioxide reduction
4. understanding socio-economic impacts of novel carbon mitigation technologies
AREAS OF RESEARCH
Scalable Technologies for CO2 Capture
CO2 Electroreduction
Sustainable Catalyst for Water Splitting
Ammonia Electrosynthesis
Our Lab is in Barcelona
By the Beach …
@ ICFO
The People: Our team!
Prof. Dr. F. Pelayo Garcia de Arquer
Professor Arquer is a Group Leader at ICFO in Barcelona, Spain. After completing his PhD in Optoelectronics, he spent several fruitful years as postdoctoral fellow in the Sargent Group at University of Toronto. He was then appointed to Director of Research for Emerging Optoelectronic Applications, making several high impact contributions to the field. He is passionate about green technologies, and eager to work with talented students and scientists with similar ambitions.
A Ozden, FP García de Arquer, JE Huang, J Wicks … – Nature Sustainability, 2022
Today the viability of CO2R technology is limited by carbonate formation via the reaction of reactant CO2 with hydroxides and the energy cost incurred to regenerate the reactant. In this Review, we analyse the literature on four emerging high single pass CO2 conversion approaches: CO2 regeneration from carbonate, CO2R in acidic media, cascade CO2R-COR and CO2R direct from a capture liquid. We analyse each system, describe the challenges associated with each pathway and outline future research directions towards the goal of ensuring that CO2R is viable and thus scalable.
One challenge for efficient electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2) is that the gas is hydrophobic, but many of its desirable reactions require water (H2O). García de Arquer et al. addressed this problem by combining a copper electrocatalyst with an ionomer assembly that intersperses sulfonate-lined paths for the H2O with fluorocarbon channels for the CO2. The electrode architecture enables production of two-carbon products such as ethylene and ethanol at current densities just over an ampere per square centimeter.