Efficient urea electrosynthesis from carbon dioxide and nitrate via alternating Cu-W bimetallic C-N coupling sites.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 37495582.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-023-40273-2 and PMC identifier 10372083.
- 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
Electrocatalytic urea synthesis is an emerging alternative technology to the traditional energy-intensive industrial urea synthesis protocol. Novel strategies are urgently needed to promote the electrocatalytic C-N coupling process and inhibit the side reactions. Here, we report a CuWO<sub>4</sub> catalyst with native bimetallic sites that achieves a high urea production rate (98.5 ± 3.2 μg h<sup>-1</sup> mg<sup>-1</sup><sub>cat</sub>) for the co-reduction of CO<sub>2</sub> and NO<sub>3</sub><sup>-</sup> with a high Faradaic efficiency (70.1 ± 2.4%) at -0.2 V versus the reversible hydrogen electrode. Mechanistic studies demonstrated that the combination of stable intermediates of *NO<sub>2</sub> and *CO increases the probability of C-N coupling and reduces the potential barrier, resulting in high Faradaic efficiency and low overpotential. This study provides a new perspective on achieving efficient urea electrosynthesis by stabilizing the key reaction intermediates, which may guide the design of other electrochemical systems for high-value C-N bond-containing chemicals.