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Emiliano Cortés is at Nano Institute Munich, Faculty of Physics, Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich, Munich 80539, Germany. Veterinary Animal
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Future sustainable industrial processes for synthesizing chemicals should avoid burning fossil fuels, produce no carbon emissions and be cheaper than current processes — industry will not adopt sustainable processes that are more costly than existing ones. Writing in Science, Yuan et al.1 report that a plasmonic catalyst — a type of light-activated catalyst — based on abundantly available copper and iron can be used to produce hydrogen gas, a green fuel, from ammonia (NH3). This light-powered process generates hydrogen as efficiently as does a widely used heat-driven catalyst based on ruthenium, a much scarcer element. The findings reveal opportunities for plasmonic catalysts in sustainable industrial processes, and might help to establish the wide-scale use of light to power chemical reactions. Moreover, it suggests that catalysts based on Earth-abundant elements might finally emerge for use in a broad range of industrial applications.
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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-00239-2
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The author declares no competing interests.
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Read the paper: Earth-abundant photocatalyst for H2 generation from NH3 with light-emitting diode illumination
A practical method for splitting seawater into hydrogen fuel
Charge transfer observed in light-activated catalyst particles
See all News & Views
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