Recent Advances in the Electroreduction of CO2 over Heteroatom-Doped Carbon Materials

Abstract

Ever-growing anthropogenic activity has increased global energy demands, resulting in growing concentrations of greenhouse gases such as CO2 in the atmosphere. The electroreduction of CO2 has been proposed as a potential solution for reducing anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Despite the promising results obtained so far, some limitations hinder large-scale applications, especially those associated with the activity and selectivity of electrocatalysts. A good number of metal catalysts have been studied to overcome this limitation, but the high cost and low earth abundance of some of these materials are important barriers. In this sense, carbon materials doped with heteroatoms such as N, B, S, and F have been proposed as cheaper and widely available alternatives to metal catalysts. This review summarizes the latest advances in the utilization of carbon-doped materials for the electroreduction of CO2, with a particular emphasis on the synthesis procedures and the electrochemical performance of the resulting materials.

Zinc(II) Carboxylate Coordination Polymers with Versatile Applications

“…Another exploited application of CPs is the possibility to act as catalysts in the electroreduction of CO 2 . This reaction consists of the conversion of CO 2 to more reduced species, this being a promising approach to obtain fuels or other chemicals, or to reduce anthropogenic CO 2 emissions [ 135 ]. In light of this information, complex [Zn 2 (daba) 4 (4,4′-bipy)] n ( 79 ) (Hdaba = acid 4-diallylamino-benzoic) has proven a high efficiency and selectivity as an electrocatalyst for CO 2 reduction to methanol, formaldehyde, and formic acid, which were identified by means of 13 C NMR spectral data [ 96 ].…”

Electrocatalytic Reduction of CO2 in Water by a Palladium-Containing Metallopolymer

“…This value is only a direct estimate, as the CO 2 RR is much more complicated than this simple single reaction model, and a more detailed analysis is necessary for a more accurate TOF determination [ 41 ]. Comparatively, the device proved to be competitive with some catalyst materials found in the literature [ 42 , 43 , 44 ] within the parameters (solution, pH, etc.) used in this study.…”

Toward Unifying the Mechanistic Concepts in Electrochemical CO2 Reduction from an Integrated Material Design and Catalytic Perspective

“…Catalysts design strategies for eCO 2 RR can be classified as few major types viz. modification of active metal site, [51][52][53] controlling particle size, [54,55] shape, [56,57] and morphology, [58] carbon-based, [59][60][61][62] role of catalyst support materials, [63,64] Defect engineering, [65] molecular, [66][67][68][69] single-atom catalyst, [70][71][72][73] tandem catalysts. [74] The linear-scaling relationships mentioned in the previous section can be envisioned to be broken by a) reducing the coordination numbers of the pristine catalytic sites, b) doping with secondary elements (p block), c) incorporating exophilic sites, and introduction of surface ligands.…”