Crystalline material-microbe composite catalyst for CO₂ bioconversion

Abstract

Achieving carbon neutrality has emerged as a critical global goal to address climate change. As the most significant greenhouse gas, CO₂ poses environmental challenges while representing a potential carbon resource. Biotransformation technologies offer sustainable, low-energy-consumption solutions for CO₂ utilization; however, their development is restricted by low gas solubility and microbial efficiency limitations. Crystalline materials have recently demonstrated great potential to enhance CO₂ capture, boost electron transfer, and promote microbial immobilization. These materials can function as supports, catalysts, or functional media in microbial systems to improve transformation efficiency. This review summarizes recent advances in CO₂-biotransformation crystalline material-microbe hybrid systems, with an in-depth analysis of material functions, key microbes, and carbon fixation mechanisms, and looks forward to the future development trend of crystalline material-microbe hybrid systems for CO₂ bioconversion. This study provides critical insights for the development of highly efficient and industrially scalable CO₂ biotransformation platforms.

Keywords

CO₂ bioconversion / Crystalline materials / Microbe-material interface / Electron transfer / Photocatalytic microbial systems / Carbon neutrality

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Funding

the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2020YFA0907300)

the Hundred-Talent Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (2024ZZ-03)

Haihe Laboratory of Synthetic Biology (22HHSWSS00008)

General Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (22371136)

the Independent Research Project of the National Key Laboratory of Biopharmaceutical Preparation and Delivery (552024000621)

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

Jiangnan University