Researchers demonstrated a room-temperature method that could significantly reduce carbon dioxide levels in fossil-fuel power plant exhaust.
In this reaction, solid carbon latches onto one of the oxygen atoms in carbon dioxide gas, reducing it to carbon monoxide.
The conversion normally requires significant amounts of energy in the form of high heat — a temperature of at least 700 degrees Celsius.
Instead of heat, the team relied on the energy harvested from traveling waves of electrons, known as localized surface plasmons (LSPs), which surf on individual aluminium nanoparticles.