Amorphous ZnSnOx Hollow Spheres Enable Highly Efficient CO2 Reduction

Hanjun Li; Yao Chen; Honggang Huang; Zijing Cheng; Shuxing Bai; Feili Lai; Nan Zhang; Tianxi Liu

doi:10.1002/cssc.202301694

Amorphous ZnSnO_x Hollow Spheres Enable Highly Efficient CO₂ Reduction

ChemSusChem. 2024 Mar 12:e202301694. doi: 10.1002/cssc.202301694. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Hanjun Li¹, Yao Chen¹, Honggang Huang¹, Zijing Cheng¹, Shuxing Bai², Feili Lai³, Nan Zhang¹, Tianxi Liu¹

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Synthetic and Biological Colloids, Ministry of Education, School of Chemical and Material Engineering, Jiangnan University, Wuxi, 214122, China.
² College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Qingdao University, Qingdao, 266071, China.
³ Department of Chemistry, KU Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 200F, Leuven, 3001, Belgium.

PMID: 38470947
DOI: 10.1002/cssc.202301694

Abstract

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) adsorption and electron transport play an important role in CO₂ reduction reaction (CO₂RR). Herein, we have demonstrated a new class of diverse hollow ZnSnO_x (ZSO) through the amorphization of hydroxides to enhance CO₂ adsorption and accelerate electron transport. The amorphization is occurred by calcination process, as indicated by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and Raman spectra. In particular, the ZnSnO_x hollow spheres (ZSO HSs) achieve a high Faradaic efficiency (FE) of HCOOH up to 92.7 % at best, outperforming the commercial ZSO (Comm. ZSO, 85.7 %). ZSO HSs also exhibit durable stability with negligible activity decay after 10 h of successive electrolysis. In-situ attenuated total reflectance infrared absorption spectroscopy further reveals strong adsorption of CO₂ and rapid intermediate configuration transformation in amorphous ZSO HSs. This work demonstrates the practical application of ZSO for CO₂RR and provides a new insight to create efficient CO₂RR electrocatalysts.

Keywords: Amorphous; Carbon dioxide reduction; Electrocatalysts; Formate.

Abstract

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