According to a study published in Nature Catalysis, researchers from the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and international partners have advanced the effort to use the sun’s energy to transform carbon dioxide into liquid fuel and other useful chemicals.
Closeup of the perovskite and copper-based devices developed by a multi-institutional collaboration working to develop the tools needed to turn sunlight into liquid fuel. Image Credit: Marilyn Sargent/Berkeley Lab
The researchers demonstrate a self-contained carbon-carbon (C2) production system that blends copper's catalytic capability with perovskite, a material utilized in photovoltaic solar panels. This breakthrough draws on more than two decades of research and brings the scientific community one step closer to mimicking the productivity of a green leaf in nature.
This effort is part of a bigger initiative called the Liquid Sunlight Alliance (LiSA), a Fuels from Sunlight Energy Innovation Hub financed by the United States Department of Energy. LiSA, led by Caltech in close collaboration with Berkeley Lab, brings together over 100 scientists from national lab partners SLAC and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and university partners UC Irvine, UC San Diego, and the University of Oregon.
Researchers collaborating in this multi-institutional partnership have significantly improved our understanding of the methods for producing liquid fuels from sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water.
Nature was our inspiration. We had to work on the individual components first, but when we brought everything together and realized that it was successful, it was a very exciting moment.
Peidong Yang, Senior Faculty Scientist, Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Yang and his team tracked natural processes in a plant’s leaf to create a photosynthesis-like system. Every component of a leaf's photosynthetic elements had to be reproduced and polished.
Drawing on decades of research, the scientists employed lead halide perovskite photoabsorbers to mimic a leaf’s light-absorbing chlorophyll. Inspired by natural photosynthesis enzymes, they created copper electrocatalysts that resemble miniature flowers.
Previous research has successfully mimicked photosynthesis using biological materials, but this study used an inorganic material, copper. While copper has poorer selectivity than biological alternatives, it provides a more resilient, stable, and long-lasting option for designing an artificial leaf system.
Researchers in the LiSA project worked to build the novel device's cathode and anode. Yang's team used instruments from Berkeley Lab's Molecular Foundry to assemble the device with metal contacts. During the studies at Yang's lab, a solar simulator that replicated a constantly strong sun was utilized to test the new device's selectivity.
Prior breakthroughs across research groups enabled an organic oxidation reaction in the photoanode chamber, resulting in C2 products in the photocathode chamber. This achievement resulted in a realistic artificial-leaf architecture in a device the size of a postage stamp that transforms CO2 into C2 molecule using only sunlight.
The C2 chemicals created by this device are precursory ingredients for numerous companies that manufacture valuable products in our daily lives, ranging from plastic polymers to fuel for heavier vehicles that cannot yet run on batteries, such as airplanes. Yang plans to improve the system's efficiency and raise the size of the fake leaf to increase the solution's scalability.
Berkeley Lab has a user facility known as the Molecular Foundry.
The DOE Office of Science provided funding for this study.
Journal Reference:
Andrei, V., et al. (2025). Perovskite-driven solar C2 hydrocarbon synthesis from CO2. Nature Catalysis. doi.org/10.1038/s41929-025-01292-y.