Halogen‐Incorporated Sn Catalysts for Selective Electrochemical CO2 Reduction to Formate
Tian Wang, Jiadong Chen, Xinyi Ren, Jincheng Zhang, Jie Ding, Yuhang Liu, Kang Hui Lim, Junhu Wang, Xuning Li, Hongbin Yang, Yanqiang Huang, Sibudjing Kawi, Bin Liu
Abstract
Abstract Electrochemically reducing CO 2 to valuable fuels or feedstocks is recognized as a promising strategy to simultaneously tackle the crises of fossil fuel shortage and carbon emission. Sn‐based catalysts have been widely studied for electrochemical CO 2 reduction reaction (CO 2 RR) to make formic acid/formate, which unfortunately still suffer from low activity, selectivity and stability. In this work, halogen (F, Cl, Br or I) was introduced into the Sn catalyst by a facile hydrolysis method. The presence of halogen was confirmed by a collection of ex situ and in situ characterizations, which rendered a more positive valence state of Sn in halogen‐incorporated Sn catalyst as compared to unmodified Sn under cathodic potentials in CO 2 RR and therefore tuned the adsorption strength of the key intermediate (*OCHO) toward formate formation. As a result, the halogen‐incorporated Sn catalyst exhibited greatly enhanced catalytic performance in electrochemical CO 2 RR to produce formate.