Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Toronto, 35 St. George St., Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A4, Canada.
Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto, 5 King's College Rd., Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G8, Canada.
Science. 2020 Feb 7;367(6478):661-666. doi: 10.1126/science.aay4217.
Electrolysis offers an attractive route to upgrade greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO) to valuable fuels and feedstocks; however, productivity is often limited by gas diffusion through a liquid electrolyte to the surface of the catalyst. Here, we present a catalyst:ionomer bulk heterojunction (CIBH) architecture that decouples gas, ion, and electron transport. The CIBH comprises a metal and a superfine ionomer layer with hydrophobic and hydrophilic functionalities that extend gas and ion transport from tens of nanometers to the micrometer scale. By applying this design strategy, we achieved CO electroreduction on copper in 7 M potassium hydroxide electrolyte (pH ≈ 15) with an ethylene partial current density of 1.3 amperes per square centimeter at 45% cathodic energy efficiency.
电解析出为将温室气体（如二氧化碳（CO））升级为有价值的燃料和原料提供了一条有吸引力的途径；然而，其生产力通常受到气体通过液体电解质扩散到催化剂表面的限制。在这里，我们提出了一种催化剂：离聚物体异质结（CIBH）架构，该架构解耦了气体、离子和电子传输。CIBH 由金属和超精细离聚物层组成，具有疏水性和亲水性功能，将气体和离子传输从几十纳米扩展到微米尺度。通过应用这一设计策略，我们在 7 M 氢氧化钾电解质（pH ≈ 15）中对铜进行了 CO 电还原，在 45%的阴极能量效率下，乙烯部分电流密度达到 1.3 安培/平方厘米。
