Development of Key Materials for Carbon Capture and Conversion

Carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) technology is an essential component of China's strategy to achieve carbon neutrality. It represents the necessary pathway for near-zero emissions from fossil fuels and provides viable solutions for deep decarbonization in challenging sectors like steel and cement industries. Developing highly efficient and low-cost CCUS technologies is a critical pathway toward carbon neutrality, where the performance of key materials directly determines the economics, efficiency, and applicability of carbon capture and conversion technologies. Thus, creating novel materials with high-efficiency separation and catalytic conversion functions is central to current technological advancements and industrialization efforts. This study investigates carbon capture and conversion from four dimensions: technological principles, performance characteristics of key materials, application scenarios, and development pathways. By reviewing industrial demonstration projects in China and abroad, this study highlights research progress and technical bottlenecks of key materials, including absorbents, adsorbents, and separation membranes for carbon capture, as well as thermal catalytic, electrocatalytic, and photocatalytic materials for carbon conversion. It identifies that simultaneously improving material performance and controlling costs remains the primary challenge for industrial-scale deployment. Additionally, common issues such as simplistic material structure design, complex process integration, insufficient industrial chain coordination, and limited policy support are analyzed. Consequently, this study proposes targeted development strategies, including sector-specific innovations in material systems, large-scale demonstration of disruptive technologies, enhanced upstream‒downstream industry collaboration, and strengthened policy frameworks. These recommendations aim to accelerate the scaled application of key materials for carbon capture and conversion, foster low-carbon process restructuring, and establish a negative-carbon system, thereby laying a solid foundation for achieving China's carbon neutrality goals.