Accelerating CO2 Electroreduction to Multicarbon Products via Synergistic Electric-Thermal Field on Copper Nanoneedles.

Electrochemical CO2 reduction is a promising way to mitigate CO2 emissions and close the anthropogenic carbon cycle. Among products from CO2RR, multicarbon chemicals, such as ethylene and ethanol with high energy density, are more valuable. However, the selectivity and reaction rate of C2 production are unsatisfactory due to the sluggish thermodynamics and kinetics of C-C coupling. The electric field and thermal field have been studied and utilized to promote catalytic reactions, as they can regulate the thermodynamic and kinetic barriers of reactions. Either raising the potential or heating the electrolyte can enhance C-C coupling, but these come at the cost of increasing side reactions, such as the hydrogen evolution reaction. Here, we present a generic strategy to enhance the local electric field and temperature simultaneously and dramatically improve the electric-thermal synergy desired in electrocatalysis. A conformal coating of ∼5 nm of polytetrafluoroethylene significantly improves the catalytic ability of copper nanoneedles (∼7-fold electric field and ∼40 K temperature enhancement at the tips compared with bare copper nanoneedles experimentally), resulting in an improved C2 Faradaic efficiency of over 86% at a partial current density of more than 250 mA cm-2 and a record-high C2 turnover frequency of 11.5 ± 0.3 s-1 Cu site-1. Combined with its low cost and scalability, the electric-thermal strategy for a state-of-the-art catalyst not only offers new insight into improving activity and selectivity of value-added C2 products as we demonstrated but also inspires advances in efficiency and/or selectivity of other valuable electro-/photocatalysis such as hydrogen evolution, nitrogen reduction, and hydrogen peroxide electrosynthesis.

Iron phthalocyanine with coordination induced electronic localization to boost oxygen reduction reaction.

Iron phthalocyanine (FePc) is a promising non-precious catalyst for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). Unfortunately, FePc with plane-symmetric FeN4 site usually exhibits an unsatisfactory ORR activity due to its poor O2 adsorption and activation. Here, we report an axial Fe-O coordination induced electronic localization strategy to improve its O2 adsorption, activation and thus the ORR performance. Theoretical calculations indicate that the Fe-O coordination evokes the electronic localization among the axial direction of O-FeN4 sites to enhance O2 adsorption and activation. To realize this speculation, FePc is coordinated with an oxidized carbon. Synchrotron X-ray absorption and Mössbauer spectra validate Fe-O coordination between FePc and carbon. The obtained catalyst exhibits fast kinetics for O2 adsorption and activation with an ultralow Tafel slope of 27.5 mV dec-1 and a remarkable half-wave potential of 0.90 V. This work offers a new strategy to regulate catalytic sites for better performance.

Graphitic Carbon Nitride with Dopant Induced Charge Localization for Enhanced Photoreduction of CO2 to CH4.

The photoreduction of CO2 to hydrocarbon products has attracted much attention because it provides an avenue to directly synthesize value-added carbon-based fuels and feedstocks using solar energy. Among various photocatalysts, graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) has emerged as an attractive metal-free visible-light photocatalyst due to its advantages of earth-abundance, nontoxicity, and stability. Unfortunately, its photocatalytic efficiency is seriously limited by charge carriers' ready recombination and their low reaction dynamics. Modifying the local electronic structure of g-C3N4 is predicted to be an efficient way to improve the charge transfer and reaction efficiency. Here, boron (B) is doped into the large cavity between adjacent tri-s-triazine units via coordination with two-coordinated N atoms. Theoretical calculations prove that the new electron excitation from N (2p x , 2p y ) to B (2p x , 2p y ) with the same orbital direction in B-doped g-C3N4 is much easier than N (2p x , 2p y ) to C 2p z in pure g-C3N4, and improves the charge transfer and localization, and thus the reaction dynamics. Moreover, B atoms doping changes the adsorption of CO (intermediate), and can act as active sites for CH4 production. As a result, the optimal sample of 1%B/g-C3N4 exhibits better selectivity for CH4 with ≈32 times higher yield than that of pure g-C3N4.