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Updated: Nov 16, 2025
Synthesis and Performance Characterizations of Transition Metal Single Atom Catalyst for Electrochemical CO2 Reduction
Published on: April 10, 2018
Heterostructure of ZnO Nanosheets/Zn with a Highly Enhanced Edge Surface for Efficient CO2 Electrochemical Reduction
Qian Xiang1, Fan Li1, Jiale Wang1
1State Key Laboratory of Metal Matrix Composites, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 800 Dongchuan Road, Shanghai 200240, P. R. China.
Abstract:
Electrochemical reduction of CO2 to valuable chemicals or fuels is critical for closing the carbon cycle and preventing further deterioration of the environment. Here, we discover that by adopting the Zn foil as the substrate, a ZnO two-dimensional sheet array is in situ synthesized on the Zn foil by a facile hydrothermal method. The obtained ZnO sheet array/Zn foil exhibited an outstanding CO2 reduction performance to CO, which showed the highest Faraday efficiency of 85% for CO at -2.0 V (vs Ag/AgCl) with a current density of 11.5 mA/cm2 compared with the freestanding ZnO sheets and particles and excellent stability in the 0.1 M KHCO3 electrolyte. The in situ vertical ZnO sheet array exposed with abundant exposed (11̅00) edge facets can accelerate the electron transfer and improve the number of active sites, which leads to the enhanced reduction performance. Alongside, the density functional theory simulation indicated that the vertical-grown ZnO sheet array possesses lower Gibbs free energy for the CO2 activation, with a more exposed (11̅00) edge surface of ZnO.
