Factors Influencing the Performance of Copper-Bearing Catalysts in the CO₂ Reduction System

Abstract

In the face of the increasingly serious greenhouse effect and climate warming, carbon dioxide reduction (CO2RR) technology, which can produce valuable chemicals and fuels while consuming CO2, has become the focus of technology development. However, in the process of CO2 conversion into high-value products, it is still a challenge for electrocatalytic materials to achieve high efficiency and selectivity while inhibiting the byproducts of the hydrogen evolution reaction. These challenges can be solved by clarifying the factors regulating the catalytic performance of the CO2RR. With this background, we divided copper-bearing catalysts into bulk phase catalyst, copper-bearing compound catalyst, alloy catalyst, and single-atom catalyst and summarized the development status of each system in recent years. In addition, we further discussed the mechanisms affecting the performance of the CO2RR to help design catalysts with more effective selectivity. We hope this Review will inspire and encourage researchers to develop copper-bearing catalysts with better CO2RR performance.

Recent advances in CO2 capture and reduction

“…Each of these three steps plays an important role in controlling catalyst selectivity and final product distribution. 91 The CO 2 RR pathways have been studied extensively to understand various products detected from CO 2 RR. Fig.…”

Cu‐Based Organic‐Inorganic Composite Materials for Electrochemical CO2Reduction

“…In addition, plots of electron density difference revealed the interaction process between tetrahydro-bipyridine and the *CO intermediate mediated by water molecules (Figure 2B). The tetrahydro-bipyridine molecules transferred electrons to the water molecules around the *CO intermediates, which enhanced the adsorption of *CO (especially CO atop ), thereby [79] Copyright 2021, American Chemical Society.…”

“…As shown in Figure 1, [79] the formation processes of C 1 products are relatively simple compared to the reaction pathways of C 2+ products. CO 2 is firstly adsorbed on the catalyst surface to form the intermediate *COOH (* represents the active site), which is further desorbed to form HCOOH through the CEPT process [31] .…”

“… Possible mechanisms of CO 2 RR for the formation of C 1 and C 2+ products. Reproduced with permission [79] . Copyright 2021, American Chemical Society.…”

Photocatalytic CO2reduction on Cu single atoms incorporated in ordered macroporous TiO2toward tunable products

“…[8][9][10][11][12] Among them, copper (Cu) has been identified as one of the most promising cocatalysts to convert CO 2 into various hydrocarbons owing to its optimum binding ability with CO 2 and reaction intermediates. [13][14][15][16] The individual Cu atoms immobilized on light-harvesting semiconductors can act as excellent active sites for activating CO 2 molecules and stabilizing reaction intermediates in the photocatalytic CO 2 reduction reaction. 17,18 Moreover, the introduction of highly dispersed Cu heteroatoms in light-harvesting semiconductors can broaden the light-adsorption range and enhance the photoexcited charge separation efficiency.…”