Phase and structure engineering of copper tin heterostructures for efficient electrochemical carbon dioxide reduction

Abstract

While engineering the phase and structure of electrocatalysts could regulate the performance of many typical electrochemical processes, its importance to the carbon dioxide electroreduction has been largely unexplored. Herein, a series of phase and structure engineered copper-tin dioxide catalysts have been created and thoroughly exploited for the carbon dioxide electroreduction to correlate performance with their unique structures and phases. The copper oxide/hollow tin dioxide heterostructure catalyst exhibits promising performance, which can tune the products from carbon monoxide to formic acid at high faradaic efficiency by simply changing the electrolysis potentials from −0.7 VRHE to −1.0 VRHE. The excellent performance is attributed to the abundant copper/tin dioxide interfaces involved in the copper oxide/hollow tin dioxide heterostructure during the electrochemical process, decreasing the reaction free-energies for the formation of COOH* species. Our work reported herein emphasizes the importance of phase and structure modulating of catalysts for enhancing electrochemical CO2 reduction and beyond.

Stabilization of Sn Anode through Structural Reconstruction of a Cu–Sn Intermetallic Coating Layer

“…As expected, the metallic Cu phase was found in the lithiated Cu-Sn@Sn film, showing diffraction spots on the ring patterns of Cu (111), (200), (220), and (311) planes. [45,46] This confirms the existence of the precipitated Cu phase due to the lithiation of Cu 3 Sn and structural reconstruction. Furthermore, the diffraction spots corresponding to the Li 7 Sn 3 (310) plane were also present, which is consistent with the CV measurements.…”

CuSn Alloy Nanoparticles on Nitrogen‐Doped Graphene for Electrocatalytic CO2 Reduction

“…Meanwhile, the different potential barriers of the CO and HCOOH desorption on the surfaces of Sn and CuSn alloys verify that the CuSn alloys show better selectivity than that of Sn. In addition, nonsignificant variation between the external potential in the transition to CO* and HCOOH* from COOH* leads to the poor selectivity for CO and formate comparing with the performance reported …”

“…However, the electrocatalytic selectivity of CO and formate for the CuSn 0.175 are significantly lower than those reported (>91 % for CO and >95 % for formate). The selectivity of alloy catalysts can be affected largely by their composition, morphology and structure . It can be inferred that further regulation of the composition and chemical state of the CuSn alloy nanoparticles could improve the selectivity of CO or formate.…”

“…The phase and the structure can also affect the activity and the selectivity of CuSn catalysts for CO 2 RR. With exploiting a series of CuSn catalysts, the hollow Cu/Sn heterostructure with oxidation state exhibits promising selectivity with the FE of 70.1 % for formic acid . The excellent performance was attributed to the abundant copper/tin dioxide interfaces.…”

Synergy effects on Sn-Cu alloy catalyst for efficient CO2 electroreduction to formate with high mass activity

“…Electrochemical CO 2 reduction reaction (CO 2 RR) provides an attractive approach for renewable energy storage and CO 2 conversion to valuable chemicals [1][2][3][4]. Currently, C 1 chemicals (e.g., formate and CO) production is identified as the most practicable and potentially profitable pathway of CO 2 RR [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]. In particular, formate is usually used as a kinetically stable liquid fuel in fuel cells, because of the high hydrogen content and easy handling (e.g., transport and storage) at room temperature [8].…”