Enhancing Local CO<sub>2</sub> Adsorption by L‐histidine Incorporation for Selective Formate Production Over the Wide Potential Window
Yicheng Li, Ernest Pahuyo Delmo, Guoyu Hou, Xianglong Cui, Ming Zhao, Zhihong Tian, Yu Zhang, Minhua Shao
Abstract
Abstract Electrochemical carbon dioxide reduction reaction (CO 2 RR) to produce valuable chemicals is a promising pathway to alleviate the energy crisis and global warming issues. However, simultaneously achieving high Faradaic efficiency (FE) and current densities of CO 2 RR in a wide potential range remains as a huge challenge for practical implements. Herein, we demonstrate that incorporating bismuth‐based (BH) catalysts with L‐histidine, a common amino acid molecule of proteins, is an effective strategy to overcome the inherent trade‐off between the activity and selectivity. Benefiting from the significantly enhanced CO 2 adsorption capability and promoted electron‐rich nature by L‐histidine integrity, the BH catalyst exhibits excellent FE formate in the unprecedented wide potential windows (>90 % within −0.1–−1.8 V and >95 % within −0.2–−1.6 V versus reversible hydrogen electrode, RHE). Excellent CO 2 RR performance can still be achieved under the low‐concentration CO 2 feeding (e.g., 20 vol.%). Besides, an extremely low onset potential of −0.05 V RHE (close to the theoretical thermodynamic potential of −0.02 V RHE ) was detected by in situ ultraviolet‐visible (UV‐Vis) measurements, together with stable operation over 50 h with preserved FE formate of ≈95 % and high partial current density of 326.2 mA cm −2 at −1.0 V RHE .