A general and facile calcination method to synthesize single-site catalysts for highly efficient electrochemical CO2 reduction
Rui Sui, Bingyan Wang, Yongsheng Wang, Jiajing Pei, Wei Zhu, Wenxing Chen, Chunhui Li, Ailing Sun, Zhongbin Zhuang
Abstract
The electrochemical CO2 reduction reaction (CO2RR) has received widespread attention as a promising method for producing sustainable chemicals and mitigating the global warming. Here, we demonstrate a general and facile synthetic route for the metal-nitrogen-carbon (M-N-C) type catalyst by simply calcinating metal acetate and urea with commercial carbon black, which have potential application in CO2RR. The synthesized Ni−NC−600 catalyst has the structure of single Ni atom coordinated with one N atom and three C atoms (Ni−N1C3), which is suggested by X-ray absorption spectroscopy. The Ni−NC−600 catalyst exhibits high CO2RR catalytic performance and a high CO Faraday efficiency above 98% in a wide potential range from −0.7 to −1.3 V (vs. reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE)), superior to most of the reported Ni−N−C catalysts. This work has developed a facile strategy to synthesize high performance CO2RR catalyst.