Retained Oxygen Regulation in Oxide‐Derived Copper for Promoted CO <sub>2</sub> Electroreduction Toward Multicarbon Products
Abstract
Abstract Electrochemical CO 2 reduction to multicarbon products provides an attractive route to store intermittent renewable electricity as high value‐added chemicals. Oxide‐derived Cu (OD‐Cu) has been widely investigated for its tunable selectivity toward multicarbon (C 2+ ) products; however, it still remains a challenge to understand and regulate the retained oxygen of OD‐Cu in the complex reconstruction process. In this work, we investigate thickness determined residual oxygen in OD‐Cu, using CuO nanosheets as prototype precatalysts. When the thickness of CuO precatalyst decreased to 1.6 nm, the enhancement of the ability to retain oxygen are achieved, leading to selective C 2+ production with Faradaic efficiency of around 80% over a wide current density range of 300–700 mA cm −2 with a peak value of 84.6% at 700 mA cm −2 . Long‐time molecular dynamics simulations reveal the enhanced stability of Cu–CuO structure with the layers of removed oxygen increased, favoring *CHO formation and *OC‐CHO coupling toward C 2+ products; structural characterizations and electrochemical results further demonstrate the reconstructed stacked nanosheets with high oxygen retention capacity and easily reoxidized metallic Cu sites. This work underscores the crucial role of the retained oxygen for the OD‐Cu performance and provides insights into designing OD‐Cu with oxygen retention to enhance C 2+ products formation.
Article Details
Authors (11)
Huan Wang
Hai Xiang Yang
Key Laboratory for Ultrafine Materials of Ministry of Education, Shanghai Engineering Research Center of Hierarchical Nanomaterials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology, 130 Meilong Road, Shanghai 200237, China
Yi Ning Xu
Key Laboratory for Ultrafine Materials of Ministry of Education School of Materials Science and Engineering East China University of Science and Technology 130 Meilong Road Shanghai 200237 China
Huai Qin Fu
School of Environment and Science, Gold Coast Campus
Xin Yan Li
Key Laboratory for Ultrafine Materials of Ministry of Education School of Materials Science and Engineering East China University of Science and Technology 130 Meilong Road Shanghai 200237 China
Jing Jing He
National Enterprise Technology Center Inner Mongolia Erdos Electric Power and Metallurgy Group Company Limited Ordos Inner Mongolia 016064 China
Qiang Niu
Jia Chen Wu
Key Laboratory for Ultrafine Materials of Ministry of Education School of Materials Science and Engineering East China University of Science and Technology 130 Meilong Road Shanghai 200237 China
Hai Yang Yuan
Key Laboratory for Ultrafine Materials of Ministry of Education, Shanghai Engineering Research Center of Hierarchical Nanomaterials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology, 130 Meilong Road, Shanghai 200237, China
Peng Fei Liu
Key Laboratory for Ultrafine Materials of Ministry of Education, Shanghai Engineering Research Center of Hierarchical Nanomaterials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology, 130 Meilong Road, Shanghai 200237, China
Hua Gui Yang
Key Laboratory for Ultrafine Materials of Ministry of Education, Shanghai Engineering Research Center of Hierarchical Nanomaterials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology, 130 Meilong Road, Shanghai 200237, China