Artificial Leaf team
Winner: 2021 Environment, Sustainability and Energy Division Horizon Prize:
John Jeyes Award
For successfully prototyping a solar-to-hydrocarbons reactor, achieving excellent performance and demonstrating a reliable benchmark for artificial leaf design.
Celebrate Artificial Leaf team
#RSCPrizes
A partnership among chemists working in five countries, sharing skills from sunlight conversion to solar fuels production, are the winners of our Environment, Sustainability & Energy Division Horizon Prize. The team set out with one goal – to find ways to reuse carbon dioxide in a sustainable way, achieved through the design of an artificial plant.
In nature, plants feed themselves using photosynthesis, getting carbon dioxide (CO2) and water from air. Through the help of energy from the sun they then transform these molecules into sugars. This process can be replicated artificially by scientists, using electrolysers to carry out carbon dioxide electroreduction. This is regarded as a key technology for developing future sustainable solutions, turning CO2 into high value chemicals such as hydrocarbons and as a durable way to store intermittent solar energy.
Read moreThis project was completed by scientists from seven different institutions across four countries – a triumph for cross-border collaboration resulting in cutting edge science.