Cu dopant triggered Fe-N-C catalysts toward high efficiency electroreduction of CO2 to CO
Shulin Zhao, Yidan Sun, Kangkang Lu, Jingwen Wang, Man Qiao, Yu Wang, Yan Huang, Yuping Wu, Yuhui Chen
Abstract
Electrochemical CO2 reduction reaction (CO2RR) is a promising approach to converting CO2 to added value chemicals using renewable electricity. Herein, Fe/Cu-N-C catalyst is prepared by introducing copper source as a promoter into the mixture of iron source, carbon source, followed by pyrolysis. The obtained catalyst with curled edges flaky morphology and two kinds of Fe-containing sites, shows excellent CO2RR performance. The catalyst exhibits above 90 % CO Faradaic efficiency (FECO) in a wide potential window from − 0.5 to − 0.7 V (92.4 % at −0.6 V), and FECO remained nearly unchanged after 10 h of electrolysis, revealing remarkable stability. According to calculations using density functional theory (DFT), the Fe/Cu-N-C catalyst's excellent catalytic performance can be attributed to the creation of Fe-Cu sites by adding Cu to the Fe-N-C structure. This could effectively lower the energy obstructions for the formation of COOH* intermediate and regulate the d-band states of the Fe atom.