A comparative study of oxide-derived Cu electrocatalysts through electrochemical vs. thermal reduction.

Herein, we demonstrated how the processing routes of OD-Cu affected the surface structure and electrochemical reduction of CO 2 . We found that the OD-Cu obtained by H 2 annealing is large Cu nanoparticles (>100 nm) while the OD-Cu processed by electrochemical reduction possesses a porous structure of aggregated small Cu + Cu 2 O nanoparticles (∼5 nm). These structural differences lead to a distinct performance.