Issue 30, 2023

Zn-induced electron-rich Sn catalysts enable highly efficient CO2 electroreduction to formate

Abstract

Renewable-energy-driven CO2 electroreduction provides a promising way to address the growing greenhouse effect issue and produce value-added chemicals. As one of the bulk chemicals, formic acid/formate has the highest revenue per mole of electrons among various products. However, the scaling up of CO2-to-formate for practical applications with high faradaic efficiency (FE) and current density is constrained by the difficulty of precisely reconciling the competing intermediates (*COOH and HCOO*). Herein, a Zn-induced electron-rich Sn electrocatalyst was reported for CO2-to-formate with high efficiency. The faradaic efficiency of formate (FEformate) could reach 96.6%, and FEformate > 90% was maintained at formate partial current density up to 625.4 mA cm−1. Detailed study indicated that catalyst reconstruction occurred during electrolysis. With appropriate electron accumulation, the electron-rich Sn catalyst could facilitate the adsorption and activation of CO2 molecules to form a Image ID:d3sc02790b-t1.gif intermediate and then promoted the carbon protonation of Image ID:d3sc02790b-t2.gif to yield a HCOO* intermediate. Afterwards, the HCOO* → HCOOH* proceeded via another proton-coupled electron transfer process, leading to high activity and selectivity for formate production.

Graphical abstract: Zn-induced electron-rich Sn catalysts enable highly efficient CO2 electroreduction to formate

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Edge Article
Submitted
01 Jun 2023
Accepted
08 Jul 2023
First published
10 Jul 2023
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., 2023,14, 8214-8221

Zn-induced electron-rich Sn catalysts enable highly efficient CO2 electroreduction to formate

X. Tan, S. Jia, X. Song, X. Ma, J. Feng, L. Zhang, L. Wu, J. Du, A. Chen, Q. Zhu, X. Sun and B. Han, Chem. Sci., 2023, 14, 8214 DOI: 10.1039/D3SC02790B

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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