Efficient light-driven CO₂ conversion to ethanol using a CQDs/InP@bacteria biohybrid system.

Authors

Jiale Wang, Hao Liu, Yun Huang, Xianqing Zhu, Ao Xia, Xun Zhu, Qiang Liao

Published in

Bioresource technology. Pages 135746. Aug 30, 2026. Epub Aug 30, 2026.

Abstract

Bacteria can convert CO₂ into acetate and ethanol via the Wood-Ljungdahl pathway with H₂ as an electron donor, providing a green route for renewable energy production. However, the low solubility of H₂ in water limits conversion efficiency. Although in semi-artificial biohybrid systems such as InP-based systems, photogenerated electrons can replace H₂ as an alternative driving force, rapid electron-hole recombination limits carbon fixation efficiency. In this work, CQDs were introduced to construct a CQDs/InP composite to facilitate carrier separation and interfacial electron transfer, forming a CQDs/InP@bacteria biohybrid system. Compared with pure InP, CQDs/InP showed a 78.3% reduction in interfacial charge transfer resistance and a 1.95-fold increase in photocurrent. Metabolomic analysis further revealed that key intermediates involved in intracellular respiration and ATP synthesis, such as succinic acid and fructose 1,6-bisphosphate, were downregulated by 23% and 21.35%, respectively, indicating that the input of external electrons enabled the biohybrid system to effectively reduce the bacterial dependence on intracellular catabolic energy production. Consequently, the CQDs/InP@bacteria biohybrid system under 450 nm blue light achieved acetate and ethanol production of 0.70 and 0.24 g·L^-1, respectively, representing increases of 114.46% and 126.98% over the pure bacterial system, with an apparent quantum yield of 1.76%, indicating improved light-to-chemical energy conversion efficiency. This work effectively enhances interfacial electron transfer in InP-based systems and promotes light-driven CO₂ fixation and chemical production in non-photosynthetic bacteria, providing a pathway for constructing efficient semi-artificial photosynthetic microbial CO₂ conversion systems.

PMID:
42669366
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 31 Aug 2026.

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