Selective electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide to ethanol via a relay catalytic platform |
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| Authors: | Juan Du Shaopeng Li Shulin Liu Yu Xin Bingfeng Chen Huizhen Liu Buxing Han |
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| Institution: | Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, CAS Key Laboratory of Colloid and Interface and Thermodynamics, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190 P. R. China.; School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049 P. R. China |
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| Abstract: | Efficient electroreduction of carbon dioxide (CO2) to ethanol is of great importance, but remains a challenge because it involves the transfer of multiple proton–electron pairs and carbon–carbon coupling. Herein, we report a CoO-anchored N-doped carbon material composed of mesoporous carbon (MC) and carbon nanotubes (CNT) as a catalyst for CO2 electroreduction. The faradaic efficiencies of ethanol and current density reached 60.1% and 5.1 mA cm−2, respectively. Moreover, the selectivity for ethanol products was extremely high among the products produced from CO2. A proposed mechanism is discussed in which the MC–CNT/Co catalyst provides a relay catalytic platform, where CoO catalyzes the formation of CO* intermediates which spill over to MC–CNT for carbon–carbon coupling to form ethanol. The high selectivity for ethanol is attributed mainly to the highly selective carbon–carbon coupling active sites on MC–CNT.The relay catalytic platform is very efficient and selective for CO2 electroreduction to ethanol. |
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