Enhancing Cu-ligand interaction for efficient CO 2 reduction towards multi-carbon products.

Electrochemical CO 2 reduction (CO 2 R) to valuable products provides a promising strategy to enable CO 2 utilization sustainably. Here, we report the strategy of using Cu-DAT (3,5-diamino-1,2,4-triazole) as a catalyst precursor for efficient CO 2 reduction, demonstrating over 80% selectivity towards multicarbon products at 400 mA cm -2 , with intrinsic activity over 19 times higher than that of Cu nanoparticles. The catalyst ' s active phase is determined to be metallic copper wrapped with the DAT ligand. We attribute this enhanced CO 2 R performance to the accelerated steps of *CO adsorption and C-C coupling induced by the closely cooperated DAT ligand.