Enhancing CO₂ plasma conversion using metal grid catalysts

The synergy between catalysis and plasma chemistry often enhances the yield of chemical reactions in plasma-driven reactors. In the case of CO₂ splitting into CO and O₂, no positive synergistic effect was observed in earlier studies with plasma reactors, except for dielectric barrier discharges, that do not have a high yield and a high efficiency. Here, we demonstrate that introducing metal meshes into radio frequency-driven plasma reactors increases the relative reaction yield by 20%-50%, while supported metal oxide catalysts in the same setups have no effect. We attribute this to the double role of the metal mesh, which acts both as a catalyst for direct CO₂ dissociation as well as for oxygen recombination.