Coordination Polymer Electrocatalysts Enable Efficient CO-to-acetate Conversion.

Upgrading carbon dioxide/monoxide to multi-carbon C 2+ products using renewable electricity offers one route to more sustainable fuel and chemical production. One of the most appealing products is acetate, the profitable electrosynthesis of which demands catalyst with higher efficiency. Here, we report a coordination polymer (CP) catalyst - consisting of Cu(I) and benzimidazole units linked via Cu(I)-imidazole coordination bonds, which enables selective reduction of CO to acetate with a 61% Faradaic efficiency at -0.59 volts versus the reversible hydrogen electrode at a current density of 400 mA cm -2 in flow cells. We integrated the catalyst in a cation exchange membrane-based membrane electrode assembly and found that this enables stable acetate electrosynthesis for 190 hours, whilst achieving direct collection of concentrated acetate (3.3 molar) from the cathodic liquid stream, an average single-pass utilization of 50 percent toward CO-to-acetate conversion, and an average acetate full-cell energy efficiency of 15 percent at a current density of 250 mA cm -2 . This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.