̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Department of Chemistry

Hundreds of A-level students see grades rise and secure places at top universities following Cambridge's STEM SMART initiative

sb726 — Mon, 07 Apr 2025 07:30:17 +0000

UCAS evaluation shows the most engaged sixth formers saw their results jump by a grade on average, were up to four times as successful in achieving an A*, and around twice as successful in securing an Oxbridge place.

10 Cambridge AI spinouts

skbf2 — Wed, 02 Apr 2025 15:20:09 +0000

Meet 10 Cambridge spinouts, all hoping to harness the potential of AI for the good of the planet and its people.

Paymaster General visits Cambridge to see success of EU research funding

Anonymous — Mon, 17 Mar 2025 10:31:13 +0000

̽��ֱ��visit provided the Minister with an opportunity to meet with senior academics to discuss the success of EU funding streams, such as Horizon, and collaboration with EU institutions, and how this has enabled decisive breakthroughs at Cambridge.

Professor Erwin Reisner, Professor of Energy and Sustainability, greeted the Minister at the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry and demonstrated a history of the Chemistry Department’s scientific breakthroughs, before welcoming him to the Reisner Laboratory. During their tour of the Laboratory, Mr Thomas-Symonds also met with Professor Reisner’s team of researchers, some of whom are in receipt of funding from the EU’s prestigious Marie Curie postdoctoral fellowship programme.

Professor Reisner, who has a successful history of securing ERC and Horizon funding awards, then introduced his own work, which focuses on the development of concepts to make fuels, chemicals and plastics from the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.

Mr Thomas-Symonds also received an insight into their research through a series of demonstrations. PhD student Beverly Low supervised him in the Lab’s glovebox, preparing a sample for the solar reforming of biomass waste. Her colleague Andrea Rogolino showed how the team use sunlight to produce hydrogen from biomass waste.

Professor Erwin Reisner said: “ ̽��ֱ��Minister showed great talent in the lab – he handled a glovebox very well and prepared a sample to produce hydrogen from biomass using solar energy. ̽��ֱ��visit provided us an opportunity to emphasise the importance of a close alliance with our friends and colleagues in Europe.”

After his tour of the Reisner Lab, the Minister attended a roundtable discussion with Cambridge ERC grant-holders and ̽��ֱ�� leaders. He was joined by academics from across disciplines and heard from those in receipt of funding from a variety of EU funding streams.

̽��ֱ��Minister spoke to Professor Chiara Ciccarelli (Professor of Physics), Professor Erwin Reisner (Professor of Energy and Sustainability), Professor Marcos Martinón-Torres (Pitt-Rivers Professor of Archaeological Science) and Professor David Fairen-Jimenez (Professor of Molecular Engineering and co-founder of successful Cambridge spinouts).

̽��ֱ��roundtable was chaired by leading Professor of EU Law, Professor Catherine Barnard, and also included the ̽��ֱ��’s Director of Research Services, Dr Andrew Jackson.

Following his visit to the Department of Chemistry, the Minister delivered the Mackenzie-Stuart Lecture, at the ̽��ֱ��’s Centre for European Legal Studies.

̽��ֱ��Rt Hon Nick Thomas-Symonds MP, the Paymaster General and Minister with responsibility for EU relations, visited Cambridge on Thursday 13 March.

Photo credit: Nick Saffell / Cambridge ̽��ֱ��

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Solar-powered device captures carbon dioxide from air to make sustainable fuel

sc604 — Thu, 13 Feb 2025 10:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��researchers, from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, say their solar-powered reactor could be used to make fuel to power cars and planes, or the many chemicals and pharmaceuticals products we rely on. It could also be used to generate fuel in remote or off-grid locations.

Unlike most carbon capture technologies, the reactor developed by the Cambridge researchers does not require fossil-fuel-based power, or the transport and storage of carbon dioxide, but instead converts atmospheric CO2 into something useful using sunlight. ̽��ֱ��results are reported in the journal Nature Energy.

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) has been touted as a possible solution to the climate crisis, and has recently received £22bn in funding from the UK government. However, CCS is energy-intensive and there are concerns about the long-term safety of storing pressurised CO2 deep underground, although safety studies are currently being carried out.

“Aside from the expense and the energy intensity, CCS provides an excuse to carry on burning fossil fuels, which is what caused the climate crisis in the first place,” said Professor Erwin Reisner, who led the research. “CCS is also a non-circular process, since the pressurised CO2 is, at best, stored underground indefinitely, where it’s of no use to anyone.”

“What if instead of pumping the carbon dioxide underground, we made something useful from it?” said first author Dr Sayan Kar from Cambridge’s Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry. “CO2 is a harmful greenhouse gas, but it can also be turned into useful chemicals without contributing to global warming.”

̽��ֱ��focus of Reisner’s research group is the development of devices that convert waste, water and air into practical fuels and chemicals. These devices take their inspiration from photosynthesis: the process by which plants convert sunlight into food. ̽��ֱ��devices don’t use any outside power: no cables, no batteries – all they need is the power of the sun.

̽��ֱ��team’s newest system takes CO2 directly from the air and converts it into syngas: a key intermediate in the production of many chemicals and pharmaceuticals. ̽��ֱ��researchers say their approach, which does not require any transportation or storage, is much easier to scale up than earlier solar-powered devices.

̽��ֱ��device, a solar-powered flow reactor, uses specialised filters to grab CO2 from the air at night, like how a sponge soaks up water. When the sun comes out, the sunlight heats up the captured CO2, absorbing infrared radiation and a semiconductor powder absorbs the ultraviolet radiation to start a chemical reaction that converts the captured CO2 into solar syngas. A mirror on the reactor concentrates the sunlight, making the process more efficient.

̽��ֱ��researchers are currently working on converting the solar syngas into liquid fuels, which could be used to power cars, planes and more – without adding more CO2 to the atmosphere.

“If we made these devices at scale, they could solve two problems at once: removing CO2 from the atmosphere and creating a clean alternative to fossil fuels,” said Kar. “CO2 is seen as a harmful waste product, but it is also an opportunity.”

̽��ֱ��researchers say that a particularly promising opportunity is in the chemical and pharmaceutical sector, where syngas can be converted into many of the products we rely on every day, without contributing to climate change. They are building a larger scale version of the reactor and hope to begin tests in the spring.

If scaled up, the researchers say their reactor could be used in a decentralised way, so that individuals could theoretically generate their own fuel, which would be useful in remote or off-grid locations.

“Instead of continuing to dig up and burn fossil fuels to produce the products we have come to rely on, we can get all the CO2 we need directly from the air and reuse it,” said Reisner. “We can build a circular, sustainable economy – if we have the political will to do it.”

̽��ֱ��technology is being commercialised with the support of Cambridge Enterprise, the ̽��ֱ��’s commercialisation arm. ̽��ֱ��research was supported in part by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the European Research Council, the Royal Academy of Engineering, and the Cambridge Trust. Erwin Reisner is a Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge.

Reference:
Sayan Kar et al. ‘Direct air capture of CO2 for solar fuels production in flow.’ Nature Energy (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41560-025-01714-y

For more information on energy-related research in Cambridge, please visit the Energy IRC, which brings together Cambridge’s research knowledge and expertise, in collaboration with global partners, to create solutions for a sustainable and resilient energy landscape for generations to come.

Researchers have developed a reactor that pulls carbon dioxide directly from the air and converts it into sustainable fuel, using sunlight as the power source.

We can build a circular, sustainable economy – if we have the political will to do it

Erwin Reisner

Sayan Kar

Solar-powered flow reactor

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Tiny copper ‘flowers’ bloom on artificial leaves for clean fuel production

sc604 — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 09:28:45 +0000

̽��ֱ��researchers, from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and the ̽��ֱ�� of California, Berkeley, developed a practical way to make hydrocarbons – molecules made of carbon and hydrogen – powered solely by the sun.

̽��ֱ��device they developed combines a light absorbing ‘leaf’ made from a high-efficiency solar cell material called perovskite, with a copper nanoflower catalyst, to convert carbon dioxide into useful molecules. Unlike most metal catalysts, which can only convert CO₂ into single-carbon molecules, the copper flowers enable the formation of more complex hydrocarbons with two carbon atoms, such as ethane and ethylene — key building blocks for liquid fuels, chemicals and plastics.

Almost all hydrocarbons currently stem from fossil fuels, but the method developed by the Cambridge-Berkeley team results in clean chemicals and fuels made from CO2, water and glycerol – a common organic compound – without any additional carbon emissions. ̽��ֱ��results are reported in the journal Nature Catalysis.

̽��ֱ��study builds on the team’s earlier work on artificial leaves, which take their inspiration from photosynthesis: the process by which plants convert sunlight into food. “We wanted to go beyond basic carbon dioxide reduction and produce more complex hydrocarbons, but that requires significantly more energy,” said Dr Virgil Andrei from Cambridge’s Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, the study’s lead author.

Andrei, a Research Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge, carried out the work as part of the Winton Cambridge-Kavli ENSI Exchange programme in the lab of Professor Peidong Yang at ̽��ֱ�� of California, Berkeley.

By coupling a perovskite light absorber with the copper nanoflower catalyst, the team was able to produce more complex hydrocarbons. To further improve efficiency and overcome the energy limits of splitting water, the team added silicon nanowire electrodes that can oxidise glycerol instead. This new platform produces hydrocarbons much more effectively — 200 times better than earlier systems for splitting water and carbon dioxide.

̽��ֱ��reaction not only boosts CO₂ reduction performance, but also produces high-value chemicals such as glycerate, lactate, and formate, which have applications in pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and chemical synthesis.

“Glycerol is typically considered waste, but here it plays a crucial role in improving the reaction rate,” said Andrei. “This demonstrates we can apply our platform to a wide range of chemical processes beyond just waste conversion. By carefully designing the catalyst’s surface area, we can influence what products we generate, making the process more selective.”

While current CO₂-to-hydrocarbon selectivity remains around 10%, the researchers are optimistic about improving catalyst design to increase efficiency. ̽��ֱ��team envisions applying their platform to even more complex organic reactions, opening doors for innovation in sustainable chemical production. With continued improvements, this research could accelerate the transition to a circular, carbon-neutral economy.

“This project is an excellent example of how global research partnerships can lead to impactful scientific advancements,” said Andrei. “By combining expertise from Cambridge and Berkeley, we’ve developed a system that may reshape the way we produce fuels and valuable chemicals sustainably.”

̽��ֱ��research was supported in part by the Winton Programme for the Physics of Sustainability, St John’s College, the US Department of Energy, the European Research Council, and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

Reference:
Virgil Andrei et al. ‘Perovskite-driven solar C2 hydrocarbon synthesis from CO2.’ Nature Catalysis (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41929-025-01292-y

Tiny copper ‘nano-flowers’ have been attached to an artificial leaf to produce clean fuels and chemicals that are the backbone of modern energy and manufacturing.

Virgil Andrei

Solar fuel generator

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10 Cambridge spinouts forging a future for our planet

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10 companies taking Cambridge ideas out of the lab and into the real world to address the climate emergency.

10 Cambridge spinouts changing the story of cancer

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10 Cambridge spinouts on putting their research into practice to improve outcomes for cancer patients - and why Cambridge is a great place to do this.

Trash into treasure: making clean fuel from waste and sunlight

sc604 — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 14:22:55 +0000

Professor Erwin Reisner and his team are developing prototype devices that convert waste, water and air into practical fuels and chemicals.