Issue 12, 2015

Overpotential for CO2 electroreduction lowered on strained penta-twinned Cu nanowires

Abstract

Based on first-principles calculations, we predict that penta-twinned Cu nanowires (NWs) are superior to conventional Cu catalysts for CO2 electroreduction. The penta-twinned NWs possess a combination of ultrahigh mechanical strength, large surface-to-volume ratios and an abundance of undercoordinated adsorption sites, all desirable for CO2 electroreduction. In particular, we show that the penta-twinned Cu NWs can withstand elastic strains orders of magnitude higher than their conventional counterpart, and as a result their CO2 electroreduction activities can be significantly enhanced by elastic tensile strains. With a moderate tensile strain, the bias potential for methane production at a decent current density (2 mA cm−2) can be reduced by 50%. On the other hand, the competing hydrogen evolution reaction can be suppressed by the tensile strains. The presence of H at the NW surface is found to have a minor effect on CO2 electroreduction. Finally, we propose to use graphene as a substrate to stretch deposited Cu NWs.

Graphical abstract: Overpotential for CO2 electroreduction lowered on strained penta-twinned Cu nanowires

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Edge Article
Submitted
22 Jul 2015
Accepted
19 Aug 2015
First published
19 Aug 2015
This article is Open Access

All publication charges for this article have been paid for by the Royal Society of Chemistry
Creative Commons BY license

Chem. Sci., 2015,6, 6829-6835

Overpotential for CO2 electroreduction lowered on strained penta-twinned Cu nanowires

Z. Chen, X. Zhang and G. Lu, Chem. Sci., 2015, 6, 6829 DOI: 10.1039/C5SC02667A

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

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