Breakthrough in CO₂ Electroreduction to Multi-Carbon Products at Ampere-Level Enabled by Active Sites Engineering

Efficient production of value-added chemicals with high selectivity from CO₂ electroreduction at industrial-level current density is highly demanded, yet remains a big challenge. In a recent issue of Angewandte Chemie, Han and colleagues have elegantly increased the Faradaic efficiency (FE) of multi-carbon (C₂₊) products to over 70 % at amperes level (1.4 A cm^-2) by engineering the active sites for the key reactions involved in the CO₂ electroreduction. In this study, the highly dispersed Pd atoms have two unique functions: active sites for water dissociation and to induce the electron rearrangement of the surrounding Cu atoms to form new active sites for CO conversion, while the Cu far from Pd are the active sites for efficient CO₂ conversion to CO, the synergistic functions of these three active sites result in high FE and yields of C₂₊ products at industrial-level current density. This research is a remarkable step forward in the methodology for developing efficient and durable catalysts for CO₂ electroreduction and beyond.