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My team developed electrolysers that turn carbon dioxide into hydrocarbons, allowing us to create a sort of circular economy for carbon dioxide. However, you still need energy to make the device run and we wanted to do this in a sustainable way. This is where we teamed up with Federico Bella and his team who had developed very robust and cheap photovoltaics (solar panels), allowing us to work together to create the low-cost, sustainable and highly efficient sun-powered system to simulate photosynthesis.

Because we have demonstrated there are ways to recycle CO₂, one of the major contributors to climate change. With this device we can transform CO₂ into a fuel using sunlight and reuse it before it being released in the atmosphere.

The field I come from (electrocatalysis) and the field Federico comes from (photovoltaics) have different needs, and we needed to adapt the separate parts to work out an interface that allowed them to successfully work together – which took a lot of time.

Essential. This work is the perfect example, as it was born through Federico and I meeting at the European Young Chemists’ Network. We ended up discussing our science and soon realised we had the grounds for a great collaboration. So, without this international group meeting, this work would not have happened.

We took care of the solar cells that were integrated into the reactor device that made it able to work in different sunlight conditions and to make sure device was stabilised.

Before this project, the integration of energy conversion, storage and fuels production devices had never successfully achieved – so matching the different fields of electrochemistry together was challenging, but ultimately hugely important and worthwhile.

This project was completed by scientists from seven different institutions across four countries – a triumph for cross-border collaboration resulting in cutting edge science.

Let your true desires and goals guide what you do. Believe in yourself and you’ll reach them.