Perry Samuel C, Mavrikis Sotirios, Wegener Moritz, Nazarovs Pāvels, Wang Ling, Ponce de León Carlos
Electrochemical Engineering Laboratory, Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences, University of Southampton, University Rd, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK.
Faraday Discuss. 2021 Jul 16;230(0):375-387. doi: 10.1039/d0fd00133c.
The electrochemical reduction of CO2 continues to see significant interest as a viable means of both producing important chemical materials and lowering carbon emissions. The primary challenge to making this process economically viable is the design of catalyst, electrode and reactor components that can selectively produce just one of the many possible CO2 reduction products. In this work, we report the use of hydrophobic 1-octadecanethiol coatings at copper coated gas diffusion electrodes to enhance the production of ethylene. This thiol coating gives a substantial increase in the production of ethylene at low current densities as well as a change in the rate determining step, as indicated by the substantial reduction in the Tafel slope. The observed changes to the CO2 reduction reaction indicate that the thiol layer provides a triphasic interface within the gas diffusion electrode catalyst layer.
将二氧化碳进行电化学还原作为一种生产重要化学材料和降低碳排放的可行方法，一直备受关注。要使这一过程在经济上可行，主要挑战在于设计催化剂、电极和反应器组件，使其能够选择性地仅生产众多可能的二氧化碳还原产物中的一种。在这项工作中，我们报告了在镀铜气体扩散电极上使用疏水性的1-十八烷硫醇涂层来提高乙烯产量。这种硫醇涂层在低电流密度下能大幅提高乙烯产量，同时如塔菲尔斜率大幅降低所示，还改变了速率决定步骤。观察到的二氧化碳还原反应变化表明，硫醇层在气体扩散电极催化剂层内提供了一个三相界面。
