Pause electrolysis for acidic CO2 reduction on 3-dimensional Cu
Zhanyou Xu, Yi Xie, Ying Wang
Abstract
Electrochemical CO2 reduction reaction (CO2RR) exhibits remarkable potential in producing valuable chemicals with renewable energy. Operating CO2RR in acidic media is beneficial to solve the issue of low carbon utilization brought by (bi)carbonate formation at the cathode. Suppressing the competing hydrogen evolution reaction and achieving stable CO2RR performance remains challenging. Herein, we constructed a 3-dimensional Cu (3D-Cu) gas diffusion electrode (GDE) to achieve efficient C2H4 production with a partial current density (jC2H4) of over 470 mA cm−2 and a Faradaic efficiency (FEC2H4) of 40%. With pause electrolysis, the decay rate of the jC2H4 is only half that of the traditional constant electrolysis. The GDE after constant electrolysis was found to suffer from severe salt formation, leading to the decreased activity and poor stability.