Journal
ELECTROCHIMICA ACTA
Volume 139, Issue -, Pages 137-144Publisher
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.electacta.2014.06.034
Keywords
electrochemical catalysis; CO2 reduction; CuO nanoflower; stability; surface carbon
Categories
Funding
- National Basic Research Program of China [2011CB933700]
- Program for Changjiang Scholars and Innovative Research Team in University, China
Ask authors/readers for more resources
The existing Cu-based electrocatalysts for electrochemical reduction of CO2 to chemical commodities suffer instability and large reaction overpotentials. Here we report a novel Cu nanoflower (NF) catalyst with a unique 3D chrysanthemum-like structure. Derived from CuO NFs, the Cu NFs were found to efficiently catalyze the CO2 reduction with 400 mV lower overpotential than polycrystalline Cu. Besides, H-2 production was suppressed to be below 25% in terms of Faradaic efficiency in a wide potential window, implying an excellent catalytic selectivity. Prolonged electrolysis showed that the Cu NFs kept a high catalytic activity towards CO2 reduction for over 9 h. In addition, for the first time, the deposition of amorphous carbon on the electrodes after catalysis was directly observed in this study. The reaction pathways of electrocatalytic CO2 reduction and the involvement of the surface carbon in this process were elucidated. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available