Major Leap As Researchers Create Light-Emitting Solid Carbon From CO2 Gas

Researchers at the University of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada made a breakthrough in the creation of solid carbon forms that emits light from carbon dioxide gas (CO₂) in a new development that will have positive impacts in all field of human endeavour.

The research which started in January 2020 took place at the Ottawa Centre for Research in Photonics, taking a time span of a year and four months would lead the way for light-emitting solid carbon uses in science.

Research lead and uOttawa Professor, Dr. Pierre Berini was clear in the objective of the team when he spoke to scitechdaily via journal Optica. According to him, “there has recently been considerable global research effort devoted to developing technologies that can transform CO2 using visible light. Our work not only demonstrates that this is possible, but also that light-emitting solid carbon can be formed.”

This new discovery will certainly be of interest to researchers who have been involved in the development of plasmon-driven chemical transformations, industrial scale catalytic processes, and reconfigurable light-emitting Meta surfaces.

Post-Doctoral Fellow in the School of Electrical Engineering and Community Science at the University of Ottawa and lead Author, Dr. Jaspreet Walia, while analysing the processes said a technique known as Raman Scattering was used to probe the reaction in real-time to know products forming and to the teams surprise, signatures of carbon forming on the surfaces, with bright and visible yellow light coming was observed.

While harping on the possible applications of the new discovery in human daily lives, the lead author said there is a future potential for artificial photosynthesis, while also being beneficial in catalysis.

 “This fixed pathway for reagent-less CO₂ reduction to light-emitting solid carbon, driven by visible light, will be of interest to researchers involved in the development of solar-driven chemical transformations, industrial-scale catalytic processes, and light-emitting Meta surfaces.”, he said.

According to him, the team findings will have an impact on research that involves Plasmon-assisted reaction, with the expectation of the application in the oil and gas industries, where catalytic transformations that duly involve carbon-based compounds are a focus point.

Dr. Jaspreet Walia also opined that the findings can be used for possible light control and nanoscale manipulation or to realize flat light sources as a result of the light-emitting aspect of the research discovery.

“Finally, the wavelength (colour) of the light emitted from carbon dots on a silver surface could be very sensitive to the local environment, making it an attractive sensing platform for pollutants, for example.” he added.

Reference: “Reconfigurable carbon quantum emitters from CO₂ gas reduced via surface plasmons” by Jaspreet Walia, Sabaa Rashid, Graham Killaire, Fabio Variola, Arnaud Weck, and Pierre Berini, 14 May 2021, Optica.
DOI: 10.1364/OPTICA.424170