Boosting electrochemical CO2 reduction to formate using SnO2/graphene oxide with amide linkages

Abstract

Selective electrochemical CO₂ reduction to formic acid is an appealing strategy to achieve efficient utilization of CO₂. Modification of the catalytic interface with organic linkers has been proven to promote the conversion of CO₂ to CO, but the highly selective generation of formic acid is still a challenge. Herein, modification of the interface of graphene oxide (GO) with amide linkages to anchor SnO₂ nanoparticles is presented to catalyze the CO₂ reduction reaction (CO₂RR). As expected, the as-synthesized SnO₂/tert-GO shows a competitive high cathodic faradaic efficiency (FE) of 84.4% for formate at −0.96 V and shows long-term stability for the CO₂RR. Further, density functional theory (DFT) calculations indicated that amide linkages facilitate the conversion of CO₂ to formate.