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Updated: May 17, 2026

Versatile CO2 Transformations into Complex Products: A One-pot Two-step Strategy
Published on: November 9, 2019
Molecular Bridge Enables Dual-Intermediate Synergy for Selective CO2 Electroreduction to Multicarbon Products
Chaofan Wan1, Yangyang Fang1, Li Li2
1Hefei National Research Center for Physical Sciences at Microscale, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China.
None:
CO2 electroreduction to multicarbon products offers a sustainable pathway for chemical synthesis, yet its practical efficiency has long been hindered by the kinetically mismatched *CO and *H intermediates, a fundamental bottleneck in multicarbon formation. Here, we address this challenge through a new molecular-bridge-enabled dual-intermediate synergy strategy. By integrating sulfonated cobalt phthalocyanine molecules with two-dimensional Cu nanosheets, we construct a cooperative catalytic interface in which the molecular bridge not only activates CO2 to generate *CO but also reorganizes the interfacial water network to facilitate proton transfer for *H feeding. This synchronized CO*─H* delivery to the Cu active sites dramatically enhances C─C coupling and subsequent hydrogenation. As a result, the Cu─CS nanosheets achieve 81% Faradaic efficiency for C2+ products at 400 mA cm-2 and maintain stable operation for > 105 h. Importantly, Cu─CS nanosheets shift the reaction pathway from the CO/H2-dominated output of pristine Cu nanosheets to a C2+-selective profile, boosting the C2+:(CO + H2) ratio from 0.7 to 4.6, an over sixfold improvement. In situ spectroscopy reveals enriched high-frequency atop-bound *CO and increased proton-transfer-active 2-HB·H2O species, synergistically accelerating C2+ intermediate formation and indicating the effectiveness of molecular intermediate synergy in steering electrocatalytic pathways and product distribution.
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