Electrochemical conversion of CO2 to long-chain hydrocarbons

Reporting recently in Nature Catalysis, Zhou et al. disclosed a family of nickel oxygenate-derived electrocatalysts that can convert CO2 to linear and branched C-3 to C-6 hydrocarbons with the combined Faradaic efficiencies of up to 6.5%. The study also revealed the polarized Ni delta+ associated with Ni-O bonds as the active sites in pro-moting carbon-carbon bond coupling through mechanistic investi-gations using advanced characterization tools and computational modeling

Automated summary

The study presents a family of nickel oxygenate-derived electrocatalysts capable of converting CO2 into linear and branched C-3 to C-6 hydrocarbons with a combined Faradaic efficiency of up to 6.5%. Mechanistic investigations using advanced characterization tools and computational modeling identify the polarized Ni delta+ associated with Ni-O bonds as the active sites promoting carbon-carbon bond coupling.