Green solutions with diamond materials:
Sunlight activates the catalytic behavior of diamond materials, thus helping to convert carbon dioxide into fine chemicals and fuels. © T.Petit/H.Cords/HZB
Horizon 2020 invests 3.9 million Euro in research project to convert CO2 into fuels using sunlight and diamond materials
A great new idea is now being investigated by scientists of Germany, France, England, and Sweden, among them HZB’s Prof. Emad Aziz. They propose exploring diamond materials for photocatalytic conversion of carbon dioxide into fine chemicals and fuels using visible light (DIACAT).
Their proposal was ranked top in a tough selection process within the Future Emerging Technologies (FET) Section of the European Horizon 2020 Framework Programme for Research and Innovation. It will be funded with a total budget of 3.9 million Euro, 526,000 Euro of which will be allocated to the HZB. The scientists propose to develop a novel technique for direct photocatalytic conversion of carbon dioxide into fine chemicals and fuels using visible light. Their ultimate goal is to build a functioning lab-scale device.
Diamonds and light can speed up chemical reactions
Their approach is based on a unique property of man-made diamond materials: these materials can act as a catalyst when illuminated by light. The project will be coordinated by Prof. Anke Krüger, at Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg, and includes science teams from CEA (France), University of Oxford (UK), Uppsala University (Sweden), Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics, Ionic Liquid Technologies GmbH, and HZB in Germany.
Unique equipment at BESSY II, HZB
HZB scientist Emad Aziz has built up a research team following a Starting Grant awarded by the European Research Council in 2011. He has set up a unique instrument at HZB’s BESSY II synchrotron to analyze liquids and materials in solution and is also leading a Joint Lab at Freie Universität Berlin equipped with high-performance lasers with ultrashort pulses. “We have direct access to a multitude of experimental instruments that will enable us to investigate the physical and chemical properties of diamond materials”, he says. Postdoc Tristan Petit has brought his expertise on nanodiamonds to the HZB team: “My postdoc work was focused on nanodiamonds in solution. Now we will extend this work to bulk diamond-liquid interfaces and nanostructured diamond surfaces and see how well we can tune these materials to turn sunlight into fuel”, he explains.
Storing solar energy in chemicals
The research project will not only enhance the experimental and theoretical understanding of catalytic behavior of diamond materials, but might also result in a first device using diamond materials that demonstrates the feasibility of direct CO2 reduction using visible light. If the scientists can achieve their ambitious goals, their project might pave the way for a novel technique to store solar energy via sustainable production of fine chemicals and fuels.
- Blind spot for the arrangement of atomsArtificial intelligence is increasingly being used to predict the properties of new materials. A research team from Jena and the United States now shows in a study published in the journal Nature Computational Science that when language models are used for this purpose, they reliably identify which types of atoms a material contains. However, they make insufficient use of information about how those atoms are arranged in space. Neither larger models nor additional training data resolve this weakness. For material properties that depend strongly on structure, AI models specifically designed to process spatial relationships are therefore the more reliable choice. (DOI: 10.1038/s43588-026-01045-2)
- Patterns of polar vortices in lead-free superlattices on siliconA team at HZB has, for the first time, reported polar vortices in (BaTiO3/SrTiO3)10 superlattices on silicon. These results expand the range of materials and substrates on which polar topological textures can occur and open up new options for incorporating complex ferroelectric states into silicon-based technologies.
- HZB congratulates Peter Hegemann on winning the Nobel PrizeOur warmest congratulations go to Peter Hegemann, Professor of Neuroscience and Experimental Biophysics at Humboldt University in Berlin. Together with Prof. Georg Nagel (Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg) and Prof. Karl Deisseroth (Stanford University, USA), he has been awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. We are delighted for him, his team, Humboldt University and the entire Berlin scientific community.