Silica-copper catalyst interfaces enable carbon-carbon coupling towards ethylene electrosynthesis

Research output: Journal Publications and ReviewsRGC 21 - Publication in refereed journalpeer-review

125 Scopus Citations
View graph of relations

Author(s)

  • Jun Li
  • Adnan Ozden
  • Mingyu Wan
  • Yongfeng Hu
  • Fengwang Li
  • Yuhang Wang
  • Reza R. Zamani
  • Dan Ren
  • Ziyun Wang
  • Yi Xu
  • Dae-Hyun Nam
  • Joshua Wicks
  • Bin Chen
  • Mingchuan Luo
  • Michael Graetzel
  • Fanglin Che
  • Edward H. Sargent
  • David Sinton

Detail(s)

Original languageEnglish
Article number2808
Journal / PublicationNature Communications
Volume12
Online published14 May 2021
Publication statusPublished - 2021
Externally publishedYes

Link(s)

Abstract

Membrane electrode assembly (MEA) electrolyzers offer a means to scale up CO2-to-ethylene electroconversion using renewable electricity and close the anthropogenic carbon cycle. To date, excessive CO2 coverage at the catalyst surface with limited active sites in MEA systems interferes with the carbon-carbon coupling reaction, diminishing ethylene production. With the aid of density functional theory calculations and spectroscopic analysis, here we report an oxide modulation strategy in which we introduce silica on Cu to create active Cu-SiOx interface sites, decreasing the formation energies of OCOH* and OCCOH*—key intermediates along the pathway to ethylene formation. We then synthesize the Cu-SiOx catalysts using one-pot coprecipitation and integrate the catalyst in a MEA electrolyzer. By tuning the CO2 concentration, the Cu-SiOx catalyst based MEA electrolyzer shows high ethylene Faradaic efficiencies of up to 65% at high ethylene current densities of up to 215 mA cm−2; and features sustained operation over 50 h.

Citation Format(s)

Silica-copper catalyst interfaces enable carbon-carbon coupling towards ethylene electrosynthesis. / Li, Jun; Ozden, Adnan; Wan, Mingyu et al.
In: Nature Communications, Vol. 12, 2808, 2021.

Research output: Journal Publications and ReviewsRGC 21 - Publication in refereed journalpeer-review

Download Statistics

No data available