Stabilizing Cu2O for enhancing selectivity of CO2 electroreduction to C2H4 with the modification of Pd nanoparticles

Electrocatalytic CO2 reduction reaction (CO2RR) to multi-carbon products (such as C2H4) provides an attractive approach to realize the closed-loop carbon economy. Although Cu2O has shown high C2H4 selectivity, it suffered from the low stability due to the easily reduced property of Cu+ during CO2RR. Herein, to stabilize Cu+ in Cu2O, Pd-Cu2O was designed and synthesized in this work. Owing to the high work function of Pd, electrons on Cu2O could be spontaneously transferred from Cu2O to Pd, thereby, stabilizing Cu+ in Cu2O by lowering the localized electron density. Furthermore, the presence of Pd can also enhance the stability of the *CO intermediate, which could subsequently enhance the C-C coupling to generate C2H4 during CO2RR. The optimized catalyst exhibits high C2H4 Faradaic efficiency of 63.8% at-1.1 V vs. RHE, which is 1.5 times higher than that of pristine Cu2O. Additionally, the stability of Pd-Cu2O can be greatly improved, both the CO2 to C2H4 activity and selectivity can keep almost unchanged for over 35 h. This work provides an efficient strategy for stabilizing Cu+ and *CO in-termediates to enhance C2H4 production efficiency.

Automated summary

This study successfully stabilized Cu+ and *CO intermediates and improved the production efficiency of C2H4 during CO2RR by designing and synthesizing the Pd-Cu2O catalyst.