Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, 34141, Republic of Korea.
Graduate School of Energy, Environment, Water and Sustainability (EEWS), Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, 34141, Republic of Korea.
Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2016 Aug 1;55(32):9297-300. doi: 10.1002/anie.201602888. Epub 2016 Jun 28.
Electrocatalytic CO2 conversion into fuel is a prospective strategy for the sustainable energy production. However, still many parts of the catalyst such as low catalytic activity, selectivity, and stability are challenging. Herein, a hierarchical hexagonal Zn catalyst showed highly efficient and, more importantly, stable performance as an electrocatalyst for selectively producing CO. Moreover, we found that its high selectivity for CO is attributed to morphology. In electrochemical analysis, Zn (101) facet is favorable to CO formation whereas Zn (002) facet favors the H2 evolution during CO2 electrolysis. Indeed, DFT calculations showed that (101) facet lowers a reduction potential for CO2 to CO by more effectively stabilizing a (.) COOH intermediate than (002) facet. This further suggests that tuning the crystal structure to control (101)/(002) facet ratio of Zn can be considered as a key design principle to achieve a desirable product from Zn catalyst.
电催化 CO2 转化为燃料是可持续能源生产的有前景的策略。然而,催化剂的许多部分仍然具有挑战性,例如低催化活性、选择性和稳定性。在此,具有分级六方 Zn 结构的催化剂作为电催化剂表现出高效,更重要的是,具有稳定的性能,可选择性地生成 CO。此外,我们发现其对 CO 的高选择性归因于其形态。在电化学分析中,Zn (101) 面有利于 CO 的形成,而 Zn (002) 面有利于 CO2 电解过程中 H2 的析出。实际上,DFT 计算表明,(101) 面通过更有效地稳定(.)COOH 中间体来降低 CO2 还原为 CO 的还原电位,优于(002) 面。这进一步表明,通过调整晶体结构来控制 Zn 的(101)/(002) 面比例可以被认为是从 Zn 催化剂获得理想产物的关键设计原则。