Recent Advances in the Electroreduction of CO2 over Heteroatom-Doped Carbon Materials

Ever-growing anthropogenic activity has increased global energy demands, resulting in growing concentrations of greenhouse gases such as CO2 in the atmosphere. The electroreduction of CO2 has been proposed as a potential solution for reducing anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Despite the promising results obtained so far, some limitations hinder large-scale applications, especially those associated with the activity and selectivity of electrocatalysts. A good number of metal catalysts have been studied to overcome this limitation, but the high cost and low earth abundance of some of these materials are important barriers. In this sense, carbon materials doped with heteroatoms such as N, B, S, and F have been proposed as cheaper and widely available alternatives to metal catalysts. This review summarizes the latest advances in the utilization of carbon-doped materials for the electroreduction of CO2, with a particular emphasis on the synthesis procedures and the electrochemical performance of the resulting materials.