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A 2018 laboratory study showed that engineered tungsten trioxide could use infrared light to drive a reaction that split carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide and oxygen. It did not convert half of all sunlight into fuel: “almost 50%” describes the infrared share of solar energy in the study’s framing, not the catalyst’s efficiency.
Can artificial photosynthesis use infrared light?
Yes, in this specific laboratory demonstration. Liang Liang and co-authors reported in Joule on May 16, 2018, that ultrathin, oxygen-deficient cubic tungsten trioxide (WO3) layers drove carbon dioxide overall splitting under infrared light at room temperature. The authors described the reaction as occurring on a single material and without sacrificial reductants. The Joule article record and summary describe the result; it is a study of a catalyst, not a consumer device or commercial solar-fuel system.
The phrase “almost 50%” refers to the study’s characterization of infrared light’s share of solar energy. It is not a reported conversion efficiency, fuel yield, or the fraction of sunlight captured by the experiment. Solar energy in a wavelength band is not the same as energy successfully converted into chemical fuel.
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The challenge is that infrared photons carry relatively little energy. The Joule article gives a theoretical requirement of 1.35 eV for splitting CO2 overall into carbon monoxide (CO) and oxygen (O2). It also describes a conventional limitation: infrared light above 920 nm cannot simultaneously trigger both half-reactions. The material design was intended to let the catalyst use lower-energy photons in steps while preserving the redox capability required for the reaction. The study summary provides these energy figures and the reaction context.
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What does an intermediate band do in a photocatalyst?
The researchers created oxygen vacancies—missing oxygen atoms—in ultrathin cubic WO3 layers. At a critical vacancy density, those defects produced an intermediate band within the material’s electronic structure. That band provides an additional route for absorbing lower-energy light, which was central to the authors’ strategy for using infrared light without giving up the redox capability needed for the reaction.
The journal summary says the authors examined the band using valence-band, photoluminescence, UV-vis-NIR, and infrared-reflectance measurements. This supports the proposed material design; it does not, by itself, establish a practical device efficiency or a commercial operating lifetime.
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What did the experiment produce, and how long did it operate?
The reported products were CO and O2. Water served as a proton source and mediated electron transfer in the reaction context described by the paper. The authors reported that the oxygen-deficient WO3 atomic layers continued catalytic activity without deactivation after three days. That is a laboratory observation over the reported period, not evidence of long-term industrial durability.
Is artificial photosynthesis commercially available?
The sources describing this result do not establish a present-day commercial system, consumer product, or purchasable device based on the catalyst. A contemporary Chemistry World report said conversion-efficiency improvements would be needed before commercial use. The available sources do not give a conversion-efficiency or scale-up figure, so the 2018 demonstration should be understood as a promising materials result rather than evidence of commercial readiness.
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Why the result matters—and what it does not show
The work addressed a real design tension: materials that absorb lower-energy infrared light can lack the redox potentials needed for photocatalytic reactions such as carbon dioxide reduction. In the Chemistry World report, University of Queensland researcher Lianzhou Wang, who was not involved in the study, described that limitation and praised the intermediate-band approach while calling for more mechanistic study.
University of Science and Technology of China researcher Yi Xie told Chemistry World: “Since the first report of carbon dioxide photoreduction in 1978, IR light constituting almost 50% of the solar energy has never been utilised to drive carbon dioxide reduction to fuels.” This is Xie’s statement in that 2018 report, not an independently verified universal account of the field’s history.
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The practical takeaway is narrow but significant: the study demonstrated an infrared-driven carbon dioxide-splitting reaction using engineered WO3 in the laboratory. It did not establish that artificial photosynthesis now captures half of sunlight efficiently, that it produces fuel at commercial scale, or that a commercial device is available.
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