Copper-on-nitride enhances the stable electrosynthesis of multi-carbon products from CO2

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 9; no. 1; pp. 1 - 8
• Main Authors: Liang, Zhi-Qin, Zhuang, Tao-Tao, Seifitokaldani, Ali, Li, Jun, Huang, Chun-Wei, Tan, Chih-Shan, Li, Yi, De Luna, Phil, Dinh, Cao Thang, Hu, Yongfeng, Xiao, Qunfeng, Hsieh, Pei-Lun, Wang, Yuhang, Li, Fengwang, Quintero-Bermudez, Rafael, Zhou, Yansong, Chen, Peining, Pang, Yuanjie, Lo, Shen-Chuan, Chen, Lih-Juann, Tan, Hairen, Xu, Zheng, Zhao, Suling, Sinton, David, Sargent, Edward H.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 20.09.2018; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 140/131; 140/146; 147/143; 639/301/299/886; 639/4077/4057; 639/638/161/886; Carbon; Carbon dioxide; Catalysis; Catalysts; Chemical synthesis; Copper; Dimerization; Electrocatalysts; Humanities and Social Sciences; multidisciplinary; Nitrides; Reduction; Science; Science (multidisciplinary)
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-06311-0

Copper-based materials are promising electrocatalysts for CO 2 reduction. Prior studies show that the mixture of copper (I) and copper (0) at the catalyst surface enhances multi-carbon products from CO 2 reduction; however, the stable presence of copper (I) remains the subject of debate. Here we report a copper on copper (I) composite that stabilizes copper (I) during CO 2 reduction through the use of copper nitride as an underlying copper (I) species. We synthesize a copper-on-nitride catalyst that exhibits a Faradaic efficiency of 64 ± 2% for C 2+ products. We achieve a 40-fold enhancement in the ratio of C 2+ to the competing CH 4 compared to the case of pure copper. We further show that the copper-on-nitride catalyst performs stable CO 2 reduction over 30 h. Mechanistic studies suggest that the use of copper nitride contributes to reducing the CO dimerization energy barrier—a rate-limiting step in CO 2 reduction to multi-carbon products. While multi-carbon (C 2+ ) products present high-value species attainable from emitted carbon dioxide, it is challenging to prepare stable, C 2+ selective catalysts. Here, authors support copper on copper nitride to improve copper’s electrocatalytic stability and selectivity toward C 2+ synthesis.