Single-atom catalysts (SACs) are of interest for chemical transformations of significant energy and environmental relevance because of the envisioned efficient use of active sites and the flexibility in tuning their coordination environment. Future advancement in this vein hinges upon the ability to further increase the number and accessibility of active sites in addition to fine-tuning their chemical environment. In this work, a Ni SAC is reported with a unique hierarchical hollow structure (Ni/HH) that allows increased accessibility of the active sites. The successful obtainment of such a uniquely structured catalyst was enabled by the judiciously chosen solvent mixtures for the preparation of the precursor whose hierarchical feature is maintained during the subsequent pyrolysis and etching of the pyrolysis product. Comparative catalytic and mechanistic studies with reference to three closely related but more compact Ni SACs established the superior performance of Ni/HH for selective electroreduction of CO2 to CO. Experimental analyses by in situ attenuated total reflection surface-enhanced infrared spectroscopy reveal that it is the facilitated formation of the *COOH intermediate in the rate-determining step that leads to the enhanced reaction kinetics and the overall catalytic performance.
Keywords: CO 2 reduction reaction; diverse geometric structures; intermediate monitoring; mechanistic insights; single-atom catalysts.
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