Lifeboat Foundation

Nice development — demonstrating that light can control product selectivity in complex chemical reactions can be performed reliably.

Atmospheric CO₂ can be transformed into valuable hydrocarbons by reaction with H2, but CO is the favoured kinetic product. Here, Liu and co-workers show that plasmonic rhodium nanoparticles not only reduce the activation energy for CO2hydrogenation, but also photo-selectively produce methane.