Copper Atom Pairs Stabilize *OCCO Dipole Toward Highly Selective CO<sub>2</sub> Electroreduction to C<sub>2</sub>H<sub>4</sub>
Shenghua Chen, Xiaobo Zheng, Peng Zhu, Yapeng Li, Zechao Zhuang, Hangjuan Wu, Jiexin Zhu, Chunhui Xiao, Mingzhao Chen, Pingshan Wang, Dingsheng Wang, Ya‐Ling He
Abstract
Abstract Deeply electrolytic reduction of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) to high‐value ethylene (C 2 H 4 ) is very attractive. However, the sluggish kinetics of C−C coupling seriously results in the low selectivity of CO 2 electroreduction to C 2 H 4 . Herein, we report a copper‐based polyhedron (Cu2) that features uniformly distributed and atomically precise bi‐Cu units, which can stabilize *OCCO dipole to facilitate the C−C coupling for high selective C 2 H 4 production. The C 2 H 4 faradaic efficiency (FE) reaches 51 % with a current density of 469.4 mA cm −2 , much superior to the Cu single site catalyst (Cu SAC) (~0 %). Moreover, the Cu2 catalyst has a higher turnover frequency (TOF, ~520 h −1 ) compared to Cu nanoparticles (~9.42 h −1 ) and Cu SAC (~0.87 h −1 ). In situ characterizations and theoretical calculations revealed that the unique Cu2 structural configuration could optimize the dipole moments and stabilize the *OCCO adsorbate to promote the generation of C 2 H 4 .