Khan Azam, Ullah Haseeb, Nasir Jamal Abdul, Shuda Suzanne, Chen Wei, Khan M Abdullah
Department of Chemistry, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad-45320, Pakistan.
Department of Physics, University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, Texas 76019, USA.
J Nanosci Nanotechnol. 2018 May 1;18(5):3031-3048. doi: 10.1166/jnn.2018.15354.
Climate change caused by continuous rising level of CO2 and the depletion of fossil fuels reserves has made it highly desirable to electrochemically convert CO2 into fuels and commodity chemicals. Implementing this approach will close the carbon cycle by recycling CO2 providing a sustainable way to store energy in the chemical bonds of portable molecular fuels. In order to make the process commercially viable, the challenge of slow kinetics of CO2 electroreduction and low energy efficiency of the process need to be addressed. To this end, this review summarizes the progress made in the past few years in the development of heterogeneous electrocatalysts with a focus on nanostructured material for CO2 reduction to CO, HCOOH/HCOO-, CH2O, CH4, H2C2O4/HC2O-4, C2H4, CH3OH, CH3CH2OH, etc. The electrocatalysts presented here are classified into metals, metal alloys, metal oxides, metal chalcogenides and carbon based materials on the basis of their elemental composition, whose performance is discussed in light of catalyst activity, product selectivity, Faradaic efficiency (FE), catalytic durability and in selected cases mechanism of CO2 electroreduction. The effect of particle size, morphology and solution-electrolyte type and composition on the catalyst property/activity is also discussed and finally some strategies are proposed for the development of CO2 electroreduction catalysts. The aim of this article is to review the recent advances in the field of CO2 electroreduction in order to further facilitate research and development in this area.
二氧化碳水平持续上升以及化石燃料储备的枯竭所导致的气候变化，使得将二氧化碳电化学转化为燃料和商品化学品变得极具吸引力。实施这种方法将通过回收二氧化碳来闭合碳循环，从而提供一种在便携式分子燃料的化学键中储存能量的可持续方式。为了使该过程具有商业可行性，需要解决二氧化碳电还原动力学缓慢以及该过程能量效率低的挑战。为此，本综述总结了过去几年在开发用于将二氧化碳还原为一氧化碳、甲酸/甲酸根离子、甲醛、甲烷、草酸/草酸氢根离子、乙烯、甲醇、乙醇等的非均相电催化剂方面所取得的进展，重点是纳米结构材料。这里介绍的电催化剂根据其元素组成分为金属、金属合金、金属氧化物、金属硫族化物和碳基材料，并根据催化剂活性、产物选择性、法拉第效率（FE）、催化耐久性以及在某些情况下二氧化碳电还原的机理来讨论其性能。还讨论了粒径、形态以及溶液电解质类型和组成对催化剂性能/活性的影响，最后提出了一些开发二氧化碳电还原催化剂的策略。本文的目的是综述二氧化碳电还原领域的最新进展，以便进一步推动该领域的研究与开发。
