A Reconstructed Cu P O Catalyst for Selective CO Electroreduction to Multicarbon Products.

The electrochemical CO reduction reaction (CO RR) over Cu-based catalysts shows great potential for converting CO into multicarbon (C ) fuels and chemicals. Herein, we introduce an A M O structure into a Cu-based catalyst through a solid-state reaction synthesis method. The Cu P O catalyst is electrochemically reduced to metallic Cu with a significant structure evolution from grain aggregates to highly porous structure under CO RR conditions. The reconstructed Cu P O catalyst achieves a Faradaic efficiency of 73.6 % for C products at an applied current density of 350 mA cm , remarkably higher than the CuO counterparts. The reconstructed Cu P O catalyst has a high electrochemically active surface area, abundant defects, and low-coordinated sites. In situ Raman spectroscopy and density functional theory calculations reveal that CO adsorption with bridge and atop configurations is largely improved on Cu with defects and low-coordinated sites, which decreased the energy barrier of the C-C coupling reaction for C products.