Turning captured CO₂ into the molecules industry runs on

Motivation. Copper is the only single metal that couples CO₂-derived intermediates into C2+ products, but on its own it sprays the current across a dozen species and wastes much of it splitting water into hydrogen. Selectivity, not raw activity, is the bottleneck.

Approach. We pair copper with silver in tandem gas-diffusion electrodes so that Ag generates a local supply of CO that Cu then dimerizes, and we use pulsed-potential protocols and cation engineering to hold the active surface in its productive state rather than letting it reconstruct.

Outcome. The flagship Cu–Ag architecture reaches 78% Faradaic efficiency toward C2+ products at 300 mA cm⁻², published in Nature Energy (2025), with operando Raman evidence for the cation effect that drives it.

Motivation. It is easy to spend three years optimizing a product that can never clear its own electricity bill. Before the bench work, the economics should tell us which products, current densities, and selectivities are even worth chasing.

Approach. I build bottom-up techno-economic models that couple cell performance — selectivity, voltage, current density, single-pass conversion — to separation cost and electricity price, then surface the cost floor for each candidate product.

Outcome. "A Techno-Economic Floor for Electrochemical Ethylene" (Energy & Environmental Science, 2024) shows where ethylene becomes competitive and, just as usefully, where it cannot — guidance the lab now uses to pick targets.