Electrocatalytic Alloys for CO Reduction.

Electrochemically reducing CO using renewable energy is a contemporary global challenge that will only be met with electrocatalysts capable of efficiently converting CO into fuels and chemicals with high selectivity. Although many different metals and morphologies have been tested for CO electrocatalysis over the last several decades, relatively limited attention has been committed to the study of alloys for this application. Alloying is a promising method to tailor the geometric and electric environments of active sites. The parameter space for discovering new alloys for CO electrocatalysis is particularly large because of the myriad products that can be formed during CO reduction. In this Minireview, mixed-metal electrocatalyst compositions that have been evaluated for CO reduction are summarized. A distillation of the structure-property relationships gleaned from this survey are intended to help in the construction of guidelines for discovering new classes of alloys for the CO reduction reaction.