Highly effective sites and selectivity of nitrogen-doped graphene/CNT catalysts for CO electrochemical reduction.

Metal-free catalysts, such as graphene/carbon nanostructures, are highly cost-effective to replace expensive noble metals for CO reduction if fundamental issues, such as active sites and selectivity, are clearly understood. Using both density functional theory (DFT) and molecular dynamic calculations, we show that the interplay of N-doping and curvature can effectively tune the activity and selectivity of graphene/carbon-nanotube (CNT) catalysts. The CO activation barrier can be optimized to 0.58 eV for graphitic-N doped graphene edges, compared with 1.3 eV in the un-doped counterpart. The graphene catalyst without curvature shows strong selectivity for CO/HCOOH production, whereas the (6, 0) CNT with a high degree of curvature is effective for both CHOH and HCHO production. Curvature is also very influential to tune the overpotential for a given product, from 1.5 to 0.02 V for CO production and from 1.29 to 0.49 V for CHOH production. Hence, the graphene/CNT nanostructures offer great scope and flexibility for effective tunning of catalyst efficiency and selectivity, as shown here for CO reduction.