Direct solar-powered production of organic chemicals from CO2 and H2O, a process that mimics natural photosynthesis, is both scientifically intriguing and a practical route towards CO2 mitigation and carbon-neutral chemical production. By taking the advantage of large surface area and effective charge collection, nanowire could be applied as efficient building blocks for a fully integrated system of solar-to-fuel conversion. Here we report a bacteria-catalyzed integrated nanosystem for solar-driven CO2 reduction with high Faradaic efficiency. Nanowire arrays provide a well-defined platform to discover the single-cell turnover frequency (TOF) in electrochemical CO2 reduction, and the bacteria efficiently reduce CO2 with low energy barrier, high selectivity, and long-term stability. Combining with the versatility of microbe-based biocatalysis, integrating CO2-reducing microorganisms with inorganic nanowire light-absorbers represents a first step towards a sustainable process for producing fuels and commodity chemicals.

Integration of bacteria and semiconductor nanowires for artificial photosynthesis

248th National Meeting (2014)

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