Climate change is in full swing and will continue unabated as long as we do not succeed in significantly reducing CO2 emissions. For this we need all the options. One idea is to return the greenhouse gas CO2 to the energy cycle: CO2 could be processed with water into methanol, a fuel that can be excellently transported and stored. However, the reaction, which is reminiscent of a partial process of photosynthesis, requires energy and catalysts. If we succeed in using this energy from sunlight and developing light-active photocatalysts that are not made of rare metals such as platinum, but of inexpensive and abundantly available materials, there would be a chance of "green" solar fuels being produced in a climate-neutral way.
A candidate for such photocatalysts are so-called diamond nanomaterials -- these are not precious crystalline diamonds, but tiny nanocrystals of a few thousand carbon atoms that are soluble in water and look more like black slurry, or nanostructured "carbon foams" with high surface area. In order for these materials to become catalytically active, however, they require UV light excitation. Only this spectral range of sunlight is rich enough in energy to transport electrons from the material into a "free state." Only then solvated electrons can be emitted in water and react with the dissolved 2 to form methanol.
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