Issue 44, 2022

Buffering the local pH via single-atomic Mn–N auxiliary sites to boost CO2 electroreduction

Abstract

Electrocatalytic CO2 reduction driven by renewable energy has become a promising approach to rebalance the carbon cycle. Atomically dispersed transition metals anchored on N-doped carbon supports (M-N-C) have been considered as the most attractive catalysts to catalyze CO2 to CO. However, the sluggish kinetics of M-N-C limits the large-scale application of this type of catalyst. Here, it is found that the introduction of single atomic Mn–N auxiliary sites could effectively buffer the locally generated OH on the catalytic interface of the single-atomic Ni–N–C sites, thus accelerating proton-coupled electron transfer (PCET) steps to enhance the CO2 electroreduction to CO. The constructed diatomic Ni/Mn–N–C catalysts show a CO faradaic efficiency of 96.6% and partial CO current density of 13.3 mA cm−2 at −0.76 V vs. RHE, outperforming that of monometallic single-atomic Ni–N–C or Mn–N–C counterparts. The results suggest that constructing synergistic catalytic sites to regulate the surface local microenvironment might be an attractive strategy for boosting CO2 electroreduction to value-added products.

Graphical abstract: Buffering the local pH via single-atomic Mn–N auxiliary sites to boost CO2 electroreduction

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Edge Article
Submitted
26 Aug 2022
Accepted
10 Oct 2022
First published
02 Nov 2022
This article is Open Access

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

Chem. Sci., 2022,13, 13172-13177

Buffering the local pH via single-atomic Mn–N auxiliary sites to boost CO2 electroreduction

Y. Yang, T. Tang, Z. Lyu, L. Zheng, Q. Zhang, J. Fu and J. Hu, Chem. Sci., 2022, 13, 13172 DOI: 10.1039/D2SC04776D

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