Recent Progress in Surface and Interface Engineering for Electrocatalytic CO₂ Reduction

Area of Science:

• Catalysis
• Environmental Chemistry
• Materials Science

Background:

• Uncontrolled carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions contribute to the greenhouse effect.
• CO2 reduction reaction (CO2 RR) offers a pathway to convert CO2 into valuable products.
• Current CO2 RR catalysts face challenges including high cost, structural instability, and difficulty in stabilizing reaction intermediates.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review strategies for enhancing CO2 reduction effectiveness.
• To focus on catalyst modification through defects and metal-support interaction (MSI).
• To provide insights and perspectives for designing efficient CO2 RR catalysts.

Main Methods:

• Review of literature on CO2 reduction reaction catalysts.
• Analysis of catalyst modification strategies, including defect engineering and MSI.
• Discussion of challenges and future prospects in CO2 RR catalyst development.

Main Results:

• Advanced catalysts with stable CO2 intermediates can overcome limitations of traditional catalysts.
• Strategies like defect engineering and MSI can enhance catalytic selectivity and efficiency.
• Improved catalysts offer significant application value for industrial CO2 conversion.

Conclusions:

• Developing catalysts with stable intermediates and tailored structures is crucial for efficient CO2 RR.
• Metal-support interactions and defect engineering are key to optimizing catalyst performance.
• This review provides a foundation for designing next-generation CO2 RR catalysts to mitigate CO2 emissions.