Nanoscale Management of CO Transport in CO<sub>2</sub> Electroreduction: Boosting Faradaic Efficiency to Multicarbon Products via Nanostructured Tandem Electrocatalysts
Chaolong Wei, Yuehua Yang, Haibin Ma, Guangxin Sun, Xin Wang, Yaqi Cheng, Caiwei Zhang, Boon Siang Yeo, Chunnian He, Andrew Barnabas Wong
Abstract
Abstract Tandem catalysis presents a promising strategy to improve the selectivity toward multicarbon products in the electrocatalytic carbon dioxide reduction reaction (CO 2 RR). For CO 2 RR, CO is a critical intermediate for producing multicarbon products. However, the management of CO localization and CO diffusion remains underexplored despite its critical role. Herein, a 3D tandem catalyst electrode with silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) is designed to generate CO as an intermediate product within a copper (Cu) nanoneedle array. Via this nanostructured design, CO 2 forms C 2+ products with a high Faradaic efficiency (FEC 2+ ) of 64% in an H‐cell and 70% in a flow cell with a current density of 350 mA cm −2 . These figures‐of‐merit are currently among the top literature reports. More importantly, in situ Raman spectroscopy and finite‐element method calculations are employed to elucidate the origins of enhanced selectivity. These approaches reveal the crucial role of prolonging the CO diffusion path length for improving CO utilization during CO 2 conversion with tandem catalyst systems. The favorable CO2RR FEC 2+ in two distinct environments (H‐cell and flow cell) further corroborates that this effect is not limited to a particular reactor environment. Overall, this study provides new insights for designing tandem catalysts for improved CO 2 RR selectivity to C 2+ products.