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Updated: Oct 18, 2025

Synthesis and Performance Characterizations of Transition Metal Single Atom Catalyst for Electrochemical CO2 Reduction
Published on: April 10, 2018
Ultrastable Cu Catalyst for CO2 Electroreduction to Multicarbon Liquid Fuels by Tuning C-C Coupling with CuTi
Fei Hu1, Li Yang2, Yawen Jiang2
1School of Materials Science and Energy Engineering, Guangdong Key Laboratory for Hydrogen Energy Technologies, Foshan University, Foshan, Guangdong, 528000, China.
Abstract:
Production of multicarbon (C2+ ) liquid fuels is a challenging task for electrocatalytic CO2 reduction, mainly limited by the stabilization of reaction intermediates and their subsequent C-C couplings. In this work, we report a unique catalyst, the coordinatively unsaturated Cu sites on amorphous CuTi alloy (a-CuTi@Cu) toward electrocatalytic CO2 reduction to multicarbon (C2-4 ) liquid fuels. Remarkably, the electrocatalyst yields ethanol, acetone, and n-butanol as major products with a total C2-4 faradaic efficiency of about 49 % at -0.8 V vs. reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE), which can be maintained for at least 3 months. Theoretical simulations and in situ characterization reveals that subsurface Ti atoms can increase the electron density of surface Cu sites and enhance the adsorption of *CO intermediate, which in turn reduces the energy barriers required for *CO dimerization and trimerization.
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