A surface strategy boosting the ethylene selectivity for CO 2 reduction and in situ mechanistic insights.
Yinchao YaoTong ShiWenxing ChenJiehua WuYunying FanYichun LiuLiang CaoZhuo ChenPublished in: Nature communications (2024)
Electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide into ethylene, as opposed to traditional industrial methods, represents a more environmentally friendly and promising technical approach. However, achieving high activity of ethylene remains a huge challenge due to the numerous possible reaction pathways. Here, we construct a hierarchical nanoelectrode composed of CuO treated with dodecanethiol to achieve elevated ethylene activity with a Faradaic efficiency reaching 79.5%. Through on in situ investigations, it is observed that dodecanethiol modification not only facilitates CO 2 transfer and enhances *CO coverage on the catalyst surfaces, but also stabilizes Cu(100) facet. Density functional theory calculations of activation energy barriers of the asymmetrical C-C coupling between *CO and *CHO further support that the greatly increased selectivity of ethylene is attributed to the thiol-stabilized Cu(100). Our findings not only provide an effective strategy to design and construct Cu-based catalysts for highly selective CO 2 to ethylene, but also offer deep insights into the mechanism of CO 2 to ethylene.
Keyphrases
- density functional theory
- carbon dioxide
- molecular dynamics
- highly efficient
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- molecular dynamics simulations
- staphylococcus aureus
- wastewater treatment
- pseudomonas aeruginosa
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- reduced graphene oxide
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