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CO 2 reduction offers an attractive alternative green synthetic route for ethylene, especially where CO 2 could be sourced from industrial exhausts and in combination with green power sources. However, practical applications are currently limited due to the unfortunately low selectivity of cathode materials towards ethylene. This work uses polymers with intrinsic microporosity (PIMs) to improve the performance of copper gas diffusion electrodes for CO 2 reduction to ethylene. We report an improved selectivity and activity towards ethylene with the addition of a thin PIMs layer, which is seen as improved Faradaic efficiency, increased stability and a shift in the reduction to lower overpotential. This improvement is highly dependent on the thickness of the added polymer layer, with too thick a layer having a detrimental impact on the hydrophobicity of the gas diffusion layer. With a compromise in loading, PIMs can be used to enhance the activity and selectivity of catalysts for targeted CO 2 reduction to ethylene., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Herein, we validate a novel cuvette-based approach to measure electrogenerated chemiluminescence (ECL) by employing the hyphenation of a commercial spectrometer and a potentiostat. The new experimental design provides simultaneous acquisition of electrochemical and ECL data, allowing complementary analysis by both techniques. Preliminary analysis of an organometallic ECL standard, tris(2,2′-bipyridine)ruthenium(II) (Ru(bpy)32+), and tripropylamine (TPA), showed excellent reproducibility both in terms of the electrochemistry and the ECL signal. Equally as important, the acquired electrochemistry and ECL from the Ru(bpy)32+/TPA system served as a baseline for evaluating the ECL response of polymerizable ruthenium luminophores. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]