Breaking the scaling relations of effective CO electrochemical reduction in diatomic catalysts by adjusting the flow direction of intermediate structures.

The electrocatalytic carbon dioxide reduction reaction (CORR) is a promising approach to achieving a sustainable carbon cycle. Recently, diatomic catalysts (DACs) have demonstrated advantages in the CORR due to their complex and flexible active sites. However, our understanding of how DACs break the scaling relationship remains insufficient. Here, we investigate the CORR of 465 kinds of graphene-based DACs (M1M2-N6@Gra) formed from 30 metal atoms through high-throughput density functional theory (DFT) calculations. We find that the intermediates *COOH, *CO, and *CHO have multiple adsorption states, with 11 structural flow directions from *CO to *CHO. Four of these structural flow directions have catalysts that can break the linear scale relationship. Based on the adsorption energy relationship between *COOH, *CHO and *CO, we propose the concepts of linear scaling, moderate breaking, and severe deviation regions, leading to the establishment of new descriptors that identify 14 catalysts with potential superior performance. Among them, ZnRu-N6@Gra and CrNi-N6@Gra can reduce CO to CH at a low limiting potential. We also discovered that DACs have independent bidirectional electron transfer channels during the adsorption and activation of CO, which can significantly improve the flexibility and efficiency of regulating the electronic structure. Furthermore, through machine learning (ML) analysis, we identify electronegativity, atomic number, and d electron count as key determinants of catalyst stability. This work provides new insights into the understanding of the DAC catalytic mechanism, as well as the design and screening of catalysts.