In situ copper faceting enables efficient CO<sub>2</sub>/CO electrolysis.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 38409130.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-024-45538-y and PMC identifier 10897386.
- 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
The copper (Cu)-catalyzed electrochemical CO2 reduction provides a route for the synthesis of multicarbon (C2+) products. However, the thermodynamically favorable Cu surface (i.e. Cu(111)) energetically favors single-carbon production, leading to low energy efficiency and low production rates for C2+ products. Here we introduce in situ copper faceting from electrochemical reduction to enable preferential exposure of Cu(100) facets. During the precatalyst evolution, a phosphate ligand slows the reduction of Cu and assists the generation and co-adsorption of CO and hydroxide ions, steering the surface reconstruction to Cu (100). The resulting Cu catalyst enables current densities of > 500 mA cm-2 and Faradaic efficiencies of >83% towards C2+ products from both CO2 reduction and CO reduction. When run at 500 mA cm-2 for 150 hours, the catalyst maintains a 37% full-cell energy efficiency and a 95% single-pass carbon efficiency throughout.