Self-Healing Indium Sulfide Catalyst for Efficient and Robust Electrocatalytic CO2 Conversion.

Area of Science:

• Materials Science
• Electrochemistry
• Catalysis

Background:

• Electrocatalytic CO2 reduction reaction (CO2RR) performance degrades due to catalyst reduction-reconstruction under negative bias.
• Developing stable catalysts with robust crystal structures is crucial to mitigate this degradation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To design a stable electrocatalyst for CO2 conversion to formate.
• To investigate the self-healing mechanism of the designed catalyst.

Main Methods:

• Computational predictions guided the design of a tetragonal In2S3 electrocatalyst.
• A self-healing strategy was employed for catalyst fabrication.
• In situ spectroscopic measurements and density functional theory (DFT) calculations were used for analysis.

Main Results:

• The In2S3 catalyst showed remarkable stability (>200 h) at a high current density (~210 mA cm-2).
• It achieved a persistent formate faradaic efficiency of ~97%.
• In situ measurements confirmed structural and valence state integrity during the reaction.

Conclusions:

• The In2S3 electrocatalyst exhibits superior stability and efficiency for CO2RR.
• The study elucidates the performance enhancement mechanism and self-healing principle.
• This work offers a new approach for designing efficient and stable CO2RR electrocatalysts.