Selective electrochemical CO₂ reduction over highly porous gold films

Electrocatalytic reduction of CO₂ to CO is usually subject to the competitive reduction of H⁺ to hydrogen. In this work, it was demonstrated that increasing the local pH at the electrode/electrolyte interface would greatly improve the selectivity for CO₂ reduction to CO by inhibiting hydrogen evolut...

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Published inJournal of materials chemistry. A, Materials for energy and sustainability Vol. 5; no. 41 p.21955-21964; pp. 21955 - 21964
Main Authors Chen, Chengzhen, Zhang, Bo, Zhong, Juhua, Cheng, Zhenmin
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published 2017
Subjects
carbon dioxide
carbon monoxide
catalytic activity
electrochemistry
electrodes
electrolytes
gold
hydrogen
hydrogen production
mass transfer
protons
surface area
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Summary:Electrocatalytic reduction of CO₂ to CO is usually subject to the competitive reduction of H⁺ to hydrogen. In this work, it was demonstrated that increasing the local pH at the electrode/electrolyte interface would greatly improve the selectivity for CO₂ reduction to CO by inhibiting hydrogen evolution, resulting in a high CO faradaic efficiency of 90.5%. And this pH-induced effect can be achieved by increasing the thickness of the porous gold film through a facile synthetic technique, based on the enhancement of the mass transfer resistance within the highly porous electrode. Moreover, the thickest film, which had a large electrochemical surface area, displayed a significantly improved catalytic activity for CO₂ reduction at a low overpotential of 390 mV. These results indicate that increasing the local pH by thickening the porous gold film is selective and efficient for electrochemical CO₂ reduction.
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ISSN:2050-7496
DOI:10.1039/c7ta04983h