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CO2 electroreduction has gained significant interest. However, fabricating cost‐effective nonprecious‐metal electrocatalysts that can selectively convert CO2 to a specific product remains highly challenging. Herein, Pb‐based materials consisting of Pb0 and PbO confined in ordered mesoporous carbon (OMC) (Pb/PbO@OMC) were constructed for CO2 electroreduction to CO. Interestingly, the activity and selectivity of the Pb/PbO@OMC varied with the molar ratio of Pb0/PbO. The material calcined at 800 °C (Pb/PbO@OMC‐800) with a Pb0/PbO ratio of 0.58 provided the best result with CO as the only carbon‐based product, and the Faradaic efficiency of CO reached 98.3 % at a high current density of 41.3 mA cm−2. Detailed studies indicated that Pb0, PbO, and OMC co‐operated well to enhance the performance of Pb/PbO@OMC‐800, which mainly originated from the good interface between Pb0 and PbO, higher electrochemical active surface area, and faster electron transfer to form the CO2⋅− intermediate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CO 2 electroreduction has gained significant interest. However, fabricating cost-effective nonprecious-metal electrocatalysts that can selectively convert CO 2 to a specific product remains highly challenging. Herein, Pb-based materials consisting of Pb 0 and PbO confined in ordered mesoporous carbon (OMC) (Pb/PbO@OMC) were constructed for CO 2 electroreduction to CO. Interestingly, the activity and selectivity of the Pb/PbO@OMC varied with the molar ratio of Pb 0 /PbO. The material calcined at 800 °C (Pb/PbO@OMC-800) with a Pb 0 /PbO ratio of 0.58 provided the best result with CO as the only carbon-based product, and the Faradaic efficiency of CO reached 98.3 % at a high current density of 41.3 mA cm -2 . Detailed studies indicated that Pb 0 , PbO, and OMC co-operated well to enhance the performance of Pb/PbO@OMC-800, which mainly originated from the good interface between Pb 0 and PbO, higher electrochemical active surface area, and faster electron transfer to form the CO 2 ⋅- intermediate., (© 2020 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.)

The electrochemical synthesis of chemicals from carbon dioxide, which is an easily available and renewable carbon resource, is of great importance. However, to achieve high product selectivity for desirable C 2 products like ethylene is a big challenge. Here we design Cu nanosheets with nanoscaled defects (2-14 nm) for the electrochemical production of ethylene from carbon dioxide. A high ethylene Faradaic efficiency of 83.2% is achieved. It is proved that the nanoscaled defects can enrich the reaction intermediates and hydroxyl ions on the electrocatalyst, thus promoting C-C coupling for ethylene formation.

Development of efficient strategies for biomass valorization is a highly attractive topic. Herein, we conducted the first work on electrocatalytic oxidation of renewable furfural to produce the key bioactive intermediate 5-hydroxy-2(5 H )-furanone (HFO). It was demonstrated that using H 2 O as the oxygen source and metal chalcogenides (CuS, ZnS, PbS, etc. ) as electrocatalysts, the reaction could proceed efficiently, and the CuS nanosheets prepared in this work showed the best performance and provided high HFO selectivity (83.6%) and high conversion (70.2%) of furfural. In addition, the CuS electrocatalyst showed long-term stability. Mechanism investigation showed that furfural was oxidized to HFO via multistep reactions, including C-C cleavage, subsequent ring opening and oxidation, and intramolecular isomerization.