Urea Synthesis via Coelectrolysis of CO<sub>2</sub> and Nitrate over Heterostructured Cu–Bi Catalysts
Xinning Song, Xiaodong Ma, Tianhui Chen, Liang Xu, Jiaqi Feng, Limin Wu, Shunhan Jia, Libing Zhang, Xingxing Tan, Ruhan Wang, Chunjun Chen, Jun Ma, Qinggong Zhu, Xinchen Kang, Xiaofu Sun, Buxing Han
Abstract
Electrocatalytic coupling of CO 2 and NO 3 – to urea is a promising way to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, reduce waste from industrial processes, and store renewable energy. However, the poor selectivity and activity limit its application due to the multistep process involving diverse reactants and reactions. Herein, we report the first work to design heterostructured Cu–Bi bimetallic catalysts for urea electrosynthesis. A high urea Faradaic efficiency (FE) of 23.5% with a production rate of 2180.3 μg h –1 mg cat –1 was achieved in H-cells, which surpassed most reported electrocatalysts in the literature. Moreover, the catalyst had a remarkable recycling stability. Experiments and density functional theory calculations demonstrated that introduction of moderate Bi induced the formation of the Bi–Cu/O–Bi/Cu 2 O heterostructure with abundant phase boundaries, which are beneficial for NO 3 –, CO 2, and H 2 O activation and enhance C–N coupling and promote *HONCON intermediate formation. Moreover, favorable *HNCONH 2 protonation and urea desorption processes were also validated, further explaining the reason for high activity and selectivity toward urea.