Revealing CO<sub>2</sub> dissociation pathways at vicinal copper (997) interfaces.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 37280205.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-023-38928-1 and PMC identifier 10244362.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Size- and shape-tailored copper (Cu) nanocrystals can offer vicinal planes for facile carbon dioxide (CO<sub>2</sub>) activation. Despite extensive reactivity benchmarks, a correlation between CO<sub>2</sub> conversion and morphology structure has not yet been established at vicinal Cu interfaces. Herein, ambient pressure scanning tunneling microscopy reveals step-broken Cu nanocluster evolutions on the Cu(997) surface under 1 mbar CO<sub>2</sub>(g). The CO<sub>2</sub> dissociation reaction produces carbon monoxide (CO) adsorbate and atomic oxygen (O) at Cu step-edges, inducing complicated restructuring of the Cu atoms to compensate for increased surface chemical potential energy at ambient pressure. The CO molecules bound at under-coordinated Cu atoms contribute to the reversible Cu clustering with the pressure gap effect, whereas the dissociated oxygen leads to irreversible Cu faceting geometries. Synchrotron-based ambient pressure X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy identifies the chemical binding energy changes in CO-Cu complexes, which proves the characterized real-space evidence for the step-broken Cu nanoclusters under CO(g) environments. Our in situ surface observations provide a more realistic insight into Cu nanocatalyst designs for efficient CO<sub>2</sub> conversion to renewable energy sources during C<sub>1</sub> chemical reactions.