You are cordially invited to attend the seminar organized by the Department of Chemistry.
Title: Low-power Tunable Micro-plasma Devices for Efficient and Scalable CO2 Conversion
Speaker: Bartu Karakurt (Paul Scherrer Institute, Switzerland)
Date: 29/12/2025, Monday
Time: 12:30 (Turkiye Time)
Place: SBZ-14
Low-power Tunable Micro-plasma Devices for Efficient and Scalable CO2 Conversion
CO2 valorization plays a vital role in addressing climate change by cutting greenhouse gas emissions and promoting a circular carbon economy. In this context, energy-efficient and electrified CO2 conversion offers a promising pathway for carbon-neutral chemical production, as CO2 captured from the air can be valorized by using fully renewable electricity. This approach not only reduces reliance on fossil fuels as an energy source but also enables the use of CO2 as a sustainable carbon feedstock, offering a renewable alternative for material synthesis.
In this work, a device that allows generation of tunable micro-plasma modes (arc, pulsed, pulsed arc) on a chip for energy efficient, low-power and electrified chemical production is presented. This concept is first demonstrated by using nanosecond repetitively pulsed (NRP) micro-plasma for pure CO2 splitting and it was shown that the pulse micro-plasma maintains a peak energy efficiency of 29% across 0.2%–21% CO2 conversion at plasma powers below 1 W- nearly an order of magnitude lower power than other systems with comparable performance. The kinetic studies feature pulsed arc mode as a novel way to improve CO2 conversion, where CO production tripled compared to pulsed mode with negligible energy efficiency losses. In addition, these devices are also capable of performing dry reforming of methane (DRM) with a maximum energy efficiency of 33% and a syngas ratio close 1. The fact that these devices are low-power, versatile and built as chips enables scalable, sustainable, decentralized and renewable CO2 conversion.
Short Biography of the Speaker: Bartu Karakurt received his BSc and MSc degrees in Chemistry from Bilkent University, after which he joined École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) to pursue his doctoral studies. During his PhD, he led an interdisciplinary project between the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering and the Institute of Electrical and Micro Engineering. His research focused on the design, fabrication, and scale-up of micro-plasma devices for electrified CO2 valorization, as well as on elucidating the reaction mechanisms underlying complex plasma–chemical processes. Dr. Bartu Karakurt is currently an Industrial Postdoctoral Fellow at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) under the supervision of Prof. Jeroen Anton van Bokhoven, where he is developing novel chemical looping technologies in collaboration with a leading global petrochemical company, targeting low-temperature dehydrogenation of short-chain alkanes for energy efficient commodity chemicals production.