Product-specific active site motifs of Cu for electrochemical CO₂ reduction

• Main Authors: Zhu, Chenyuan, Zhang, Zhibin, Zhong, Lixiang, Hsu, Chia-Shuo, Xu, Xioazhi, Li, Yingzhou, Zhao, Siwen, Chen, Shaohua, Yu, Jayi, Chen, Shulin, Wu, Mei, Gao, Peng, Li, Shuzhou, Chen, Hao Ming, Liu, Kaihui, Zhang, Liming
• Other Authors: School of Materials Science and Engineering
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2021
• Subjects: Engineering::Materials; CO₂ Reduction; Single-Crystal Cu
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/154651
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Electrochemical CO₂ reduction (CO₂R) to fuels is a promising route to close the anthropogenic carbon cycle and store renewable energy. Cu is the only metal catalyst that produces C₂₊ fuels, yet challenges remain in the improvement of electrosynthesis pathways for highly selective fuel production. To achieve this, mechanistically understanding CO₂R on Cu, particularly identifying the product-specific active sites, is crucial. We rationally designed and fabricated nine large-area single-crystal Cu foils with various surface orientations as electrocatalysts and monitored their surface reconstructions using operando grazing incidence X-ray diffraction (GIXRD) and electron back-scattered diffraction (EBSD). We quantitatively established correlations between the Cu atomic configurations and the selectivities toward multiple products and provide a paradigm to understand the structure-function correlation in catalysis.