Coupling Cobalt Phthalocyanine Molecules on 3D Nitrogen‐Doped Vertical Graphene Arrays for Highly Efficient and Robust CO<sub>2</sub> Electroreduction
Xin Kong, Guiyang Liu, Suan Tian, Shuyu Bu, Qili Gao, Bin Liu, Chun‐Sing Lee, Pengfei Wang, Wenjun Zhang
Abstract
Abstract Metallic phthalocyanines (MePcs) have shown their potential as catalysts for CO 2 reduction reactions (CO 2 RR). However, their low conductivity, easy agglomeration, and poor stability enslave the further progress of their CO 2 RR applications. Herein, an integrated heterogeneous molecular catalyst through anchoring CoPc molecules on 3D nitrogen‐doped vertical graphene arrays (NVG) on carbon cloth (CC) is reported. The CoPc‐NVG/CC electrodes exhibit superior performance for reducing CO 2 to CO with a Faradic efficiency of above 97.5% over a wide potential range (99% at an optimal potential), a very high turnover frequency of 35800 h −1 , and decent stability. It is revealed that NVG interacts with CoPc to form highly efficient channels for electron transfer from NVG to CoPc, facilitating the Co(II)/Co(I) redox of CO 2 reduction. The strong coupling effect between NVG and CoPc molecules not only endows CoPc with high intrinsic activity for CO 2 RR, but also enhances the stability of electrocatalysts under high potentials. This work paves an efficient approach for developing high‐performance heterogeneous catalysts by using rationally designed 3D integrated graphene arrays to host molecular metallic phthalocyanines so as to ameliorate their electronic structures and engineer stable active sites.