Traditional metal and metal cermet cathodes are easy to be oxidized when operating with pure CO 2 electrolysis, which therefore leads the degradation of electrolysis performance. Redox stable ceramic cathode provides alternative to achieve direct electrolysis of CO 2 ; however, they show very limited catalytic activity toward CO 2 splitting. In this work, we prepare perovskite materials La 0.75 Sr 0.25 Cr 0.5 Fe 0.5+x O 3−δ (LSCrF x , x = 0-0.1) through synergistic doping and treat them in H 2 /Ar to exsolve metallic Fe nanoparticles on LSCF scaffolds to enhance the catalytic activity. With the exsolution of iron nanoparticles, the cathode performance is enhanced by ~ 4-5 times with the CO product of 5.88 mL min −1 cm −2 and the current efficiency of ~ 97.5%. We further demonstrate the excellent thermal stability of CO 2 electrolysis even after a continuous operation of 60 h and 6 redox cycles. This inspires exsolving metal nanoparticles over perovskite surface as a new technology for simultaneously enhancing catalytic activity and stability.