West Wake News

Researchers at North Carolina State University have made advancements in developing a material that could be used to convert carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into liquid fuel. The study, led by Gregory Parsons, focused on engineering metalcone thin films for this purpose.

Parsons explained, “Fundamentally, the goal of this project was to engineer a surface that would allow us to efficiently convert atmospheric carbon dioxide into methanol, which is a liquid fuel.” He further added that metalcones were hypothesized as valuable tools for addressing this challenge.

Metalcones possess both organic and inorganic properties. However, their practical use has been hindered due to stability issues when exposed to aqueous solutions or high temperatures. Hyuenwoo Yang, the first author of the paper and a postdoctoral researcher at NC State, highlighted these challenges: “If you put metalcones in an aqueous solution, the organic properties allow the metalcones to dissolve – making them practically useless.”

The researchers addressed these challenges by using tincone—a form of tin oxide modified with organic components—and annealing it at lower temperatures. “We found that the sweet spot was a ‘mild’ annealing at 250 degrees Celsius,” said Yang. This process improved both stability and charge transport properties.

Their findings are detailed in a paper titled "Mild-Annealed Molecular Layer Deposition (MLD) Tincone Thin Film as Photoelectrochemically Stable and Efficient Electron Transport Layer for Si Photocathodes," published in ACS Applied Energy Materials. Co-authors include researchers from North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The research received support from CHASE under the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science grant number DE-SC0021173.