Tag: copper nanoparticles

Smarter fungicides: Fighting infection while protecting soil health

Smarter fungicides: Fighting infection while protecting soil health

Copper nanoparticles could lead to less polluted soils in vineyards, according to a study published in Environmental Science: Nano. The researchers came to the ESRF’s ID21 to track how copper behaved in grapevines plants inoculated with a fungus.

Copper-based pesticides have been used around the world vineyards to keep fungal diseases at bay for more than a century in the form of Bordeaux mixture. Whilst it has proven to be extremely effective, copper is a metal and accumulates over time. Bordeaux mixture has a low affinity to plant leaves. When it rains, it washes it off the plants onto the soil, where it can harm earthworms, beneficial microbes and long-term soil health, which can lead to less productive soil in the long run.

Winemakers, particularly in the organic sector, where copper remains one of the few approved fungicides, face a difficult question: how can they protect their vines without poisoning their soils? With the aim of pushing more environmentally friendly practices, European regulators are increasingly limiting the amount of copper to be used in grapevines.

“We wanted to test whether copper nanoparticles (copper oxide) could be as reactive as the traditional sprays but using much less quantity”, explains Astrid Avellan, CNRS researcher and corresponding author of the publication.

Read more on the ESRF website

Image: Astrid Avellán preparing the samples in the lab at the ESRF’s ID21

Credit: D. Salvador

How a record-breaking copper catalyst converts CO2 into liquid fuels

How a record-breaking copper catalyst converts CO2 into liquid fuels

Researchers at Berkeley Lab, collaborating with CHESS scientists at the PIPOXS beamline, have made the first real-time movies of copper nanoparticles as they evolve to convert carbon dioxide and water into renewable fuels and chemicals. Their new insights could help advance the next generation of solar fuels.

Since the 1970s, scientists have known that copper has a special ability to recycle carbon dioxide into valuable chemicals and fuels. But for many years, scientists have struggled to understand how this common metal works as an electrocatalyst, a mechanism that uses energy from electrons to chemically transform molecules into different products.

Now, a research team led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has gained new insight by capturing the world’s first real-time movies of copper nanoparticles (copper particles engineered at the scale of a billionth of a meter) as they convert CO2 and water into renewable fuels and chemicals: ethylene, ethanol, and propanol, among others. The work was reported in the journal Nature.

“This is very exciting. After decades of work, we’re finally able to show – with undeniable proof – how copper electrocatalysts excel in CO2 reduction,” said Peidong Yang, a senior faculty scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences and Chemical Sciences Divisions who led the study. Yang is also a professor of chemistry and materials science and engineering at UC Berkeley. “Knowing why copper is such an excellent electrocatalyst brings us steps closer to turning CO2 into new, renewable solar fuels through artificial photosynthesis.”

Read more on the CHESS website

Image: Artist’s rendering of a copper nanoparticle as it evolves during CO2 electrolysis: Copper nanoparticles (left) combine into larger metallic copper “nanograins” (right) within seconds of the electrochemical reaction, reducing CO2 into new multicarbon products.

Credit: Yao Yang/Berkeley Lab