Wu, Minfang; Zhu, Chang; Mao, Jianing; Dong, Xiao; Li, Shoujie; Feng, Guanghui; Li, Guihua; Wu, Gangfeng; Song, Yanfang; Wei, Wei; Chen, Wei

CHEMICAL ENGINEERING JOURNAL

2024, 499, 1873-3212

Wu, Minfang; Zhu, Chang; Mao, Jianing; Dong, Xiao; Li, Shoujie; Feng, Guanghui; Li, Guihua; Wu, Gangfeng; Song, Yanfang; Wei, Wei; Chen, Wei

Oxide-derived Cu (OD-Cu) are the most promising catalysts for multicarbon formation via CO2 electroreduction (CO2ERR), yet facing structural/compositional reconstruction trends during CO2ERR. Nanocatalysts with specific mesoscopic morphology are more resistant to reconstruction, which would benefit systematical exploration of dimensional effects on CO2ERR. Herein, nanostructured OD-Cu catalysts of 1D nanowires (NWs), 2D nanosheets (NSs) and 3D nanoflowers (NFs) with good reconstruction resistance during CO2ERR are fabricated. Their well-preserved dimensional structures lead to altered Cu-O coordination, which is intensively investigated via X-ray absorption fine structure spectroscopy, resulting in distinctive CO2ERR performances. OD-Cu NWs catalyst with the highest Cu-O coordination possesses an impressive 77.7 % C2+ faradaic efficiency. Further in situ Fourier-transformed infrared spectroscopy and density functional theory calculations suggest more favorable asymmetric C-C coupling over the highest Cu-O coordination surface of OD-Cu NWs. This work provides new insights on developing reconstruction-resistant OD-Cu catalysts for value-added chemicals from advanced CO2 conversion.