European Consortium on Artificial Photosynthesis developing an Artificial Leaf: from Materials to Electrodes & Devices

The ECAP project is a contribution to structuring scientific research and technological transfer at the European level and to strengthening European innovation capacity to elaborate an artificial leaf combining in a unique device, a solar cell and a bio-inspired electrochemical stack, where H2O oxidation and CO2 reduction are performed in micro-reactors to produce “solar fuels” or “organic building blocks”. Climate change resulting from accumulation of anthropogenic carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the uncertainty in the amount of recoverable fossil fuel reserves are driving forces for the development of renewable, carbon-neutral energy technologies. Artificial photosynthesis appears to be an appealing approach for a sustainable energy generation because it produces “solar fuels” or “organic precursor” for chemistry in a stable and storable chemical form, from solar energy, H2O and CO2. The topic of this project is to develop efficient bio-inspired electrodes for the water oxidation and CO2 reduction made of a conductive honeycomb polymer film processed via the “breath figure” methodology on which cheap and efficient catalyst or bio-entities will be grafted in the pores of the film. This project deals with the sustainable developing of inter/multidisciplinary aspects of bio-entities, condensed, inorganic & soft matter to device engineering and development, using cheap and easy processes tandem organic solar cells, earth-abundant materials for water splitting, new catalysts generation and natural hydrogenase enzymes for H2 production, formate dehydrogenases for catalytic CO2 reduction, new proton-exchange fluorinated membranes and finally, electrode micro porosity to mimic the chloroplasts of a plant.