Electrochemical Engineering Laboratory, Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences, University of Southampton, University Rd., Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK.
Department of Chemistry, McGill University, 801 Sherbrooke St. West, Montréal, QC, H3A 0B8, Canada.
Chemosphere. 2020 Jun;248:125993. doi: 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2020.125993. Epub 2020 Jan 21.
CO reduction offers an attractive alternative green synthetic route for ethylene, especially where CO could be sourced from industrial exhausts and in combination with green power sources. However, practical applications are currently limited due to the unfortunately low selectivity of cathode materials towards ethylene. This work uses polymers with intrinsic microporosity (PIMs) to improve the performance of copper gas diffusion electrodes for CO reduction to ethylene. We report an improved selectivity and activity towards ethylene with the addition of a thin PIMs layer, which is seen as improved Faradaic efficiency, increased stability and a shift in the reduction to lower overpotential. This improvement is highly dependent on the thickness of the added polymer layer, with too thick a layer having a detrimental impact on the hydrophobicity of the gas diffusion layer. With a compromise in loading, PIMs can be used to enhance the activity and selectivity of catalysts for targeted CO reduction to ethylene.
CO 还原为乙烯提供了一种有吸引力的绿色合成途径，特别是在 CO 可以从工业废气中获取并与绿色能源相结合的情况下。然而，由于阴极材料对乙烯的选择性不幸较低，实际应用目前受到限制。本工作使用具有本征微孔的聚合物（PIMs）来改善铜气体扩散电极对 CO 还原为乙烯的性能。我们报告了添加薄 PIMs 层后对乙烯的选择性和活性得到了提高，这表现为法拉第效率的提高、稳定性的增加以及还原到更低过电势的转变。这种改进高度依赖于添加聚合物层的厚度，过厚的层会对气体扩散层的疏水性产生不利影响。通过在负载方面进行折衷，PIMs 可以用于增强催化剂的活性和选择性，以实现目标 CO 还原为乙烯。
