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Homo/Heterogeneous Dual Active Centers Enable Selective Electrochemical C─N Coupling of CO2 and Nitrate to Formamide
Cheng Peng1, Yifan Bu1, Shiyun Li1
1College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Peking University, Beijing, P. R. China.
Abstract:
Electrochemical C─N coupling from carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxoanions offers a sustainable route to value-added amides, yet achieving high selectivity remains challenging due to competing reaction pathways and insufficient substrate activation. Here we report a homo/heterogeneous dual-active-center catalyst that integrates molecular copper phthalocyanine with atomically dispersed chromium sites on porous carbon nanospheres to enable selective electrosynthesis of formamide under neutral conditions. The molecular Cu centers selectively reduce CO2 to CO, while Cr single atoms promote nitrate (NO3 -) and nitrite (NO2 -) activation to *NO intermediates, furnishing spatially separated yet kinetically matched reactive species. As a result, the catalyst achieves a formamide faradaic efficiency (FE) of 35.2% from CO2 and NO3 -, increasing to 44.9% using NO2 -, with high stability and activity even at low NO3 - concentrations. In situ spectroscopy and density functional theory calculations reveal *NO─CO coupling via a *NOCO intermediate as the key pathway. This work establishes a general strategy for designing dual-site electrocatalysts for selective C─N bond formation.
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