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Binding Site Diversity Promotes CO2 Electroreduction to Ethanol
- Source :
- Journal of the American Chemical Society. 141:8584-8591
- Publication Year :
- 2019
- Publisher :
- American Chemical Society (ACS), 2019.
-
Abstract
- The electrochemical reduction of CO2 has seen many record-setting advances in C2 productivity in recent years. However, the selectivity for ethanol, a globally significant commodity chemical, is still low compared to the selectivity for products such as ethylene. Here we introduce diverse binding sites to a Cu catalyst, an approach that destabilizes the ethylene reaction intermediates and thereby promotes ethanol production. We develop a bimetallic Ag/Cu catalyst that implements the proposed design toward an improved ethanol catalyst. It achieves a record Faradaic efficiency of 41% toward ethanol at 250 mA/cm2 and -0.67 V vs RHE, leading to a cathodic-side (half-cell) energy efficiency of 24.7%. The new catalysts exhibit an in situ Raman spectrum, in the region associated with CO stretching, that is much broader than that of pure Cu controls, a finding we account for via the diversity of binding configurations. This physical picture, involving multisite binding, accounts for the enhanced ethanol production for bimetallic catalysts, and presents a framework to design multimetallic catalysts to control reaction paths in CO2 reductions toward desired products.
- Subjects :
- Ethanol
Ethylene
General Chemistry
Reaction intermediate
010402 general chemistry
Electrochemistry
01 natural sciences
7. Clean energy
Biochemistry
Combinatorial chemistry
Catalysis
0104 chemical sciences
chemistry.chemical_compound
Colloid and Surface Chemistry
chemistry
Ethanol fuel
Selectivity
Bimetallic strip
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 15205126 and 00027863
- Volume :
- 141
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Journal of the American Chemical Society
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi...........ac55aedb2d371ed108831167fad5bd2a