Thomas Jaramillo

The team reduced the amount of expensive platinum group metals needed to make an effective cell and found a new way to test future fuel cell innovations.

Their work aims to bridge two approaches to driving the reaction – one powered by heat, the other by electricity – with the goal of discovering more efficient and sustainable ways to convert carbon dioxide into useful products.

Replacing today’s expensive catalysts could bring down the cost of producing the gas for fuel, fertilizer and clean energy storage.

SUNCAT researchers discover a way to improve a key step in these conversions, and explore what it would take to turn the climate-changing gas into valuable products on an industrial scale.

Scientists at SLAC and Stanford have identified active carbon catalysts and developed an electrochemical cell designed to purify water in small villages.

The discovery could make water splitting, a key step in a number of clean energy technologies, cheaper and more efficient.