Sulfur Changes the Electrochemical CO2 Reduction Pathway over Cu Electrocatalysts

Electrochemical CO2 reduction to value-added chemicals or fuels offers a promising approach to reduce carbon emissions and alleviate energy shortage. Cu-based electrocatalysts have been widely reported as capable of reducing CO2 to produce a variety of multicarbon products (e.g., ethylene and ethanol). In this work, we develop sulfur-doped Cu2O electrocatalysts, which instead can electrochemically reduce CO2 to almost exclusively formate. We show that a dynamic equilibrium of S exists at the Cu2O-electrolyte interface, and S-doped Cu2O undergoes in situ surface reconstruction to generate active S-adsorbed metallic Cu sites during the CO2 reduction reaction (CO2RR). Density functional theory (DFT) calculations together with in situ infrared absorption spectroscopy measurements show that the S-adsorbed metallic Cu surface can not only promote the formation of the *OCHO intermediate but also greatly suppress *H and *COOH adsorption, thus facilitating CO2-to-formate conversion during the electrochemical CO2RR.

Automated summary

Electrochemical CO2 reduction to value-added chemicals or fuels is a promising approach to reduce carbon emissions and alleviate energy shortage. In this work, we develop sulfur-doped Cu2O electrocatalysts that can exclusively electrochemically reduce CO2 to formate. The sulfur-adsorbed metallic Cu surface promotes CO2-to-formate conversion during the electrochemical CO2 reduction reaction.