Defective graphene for electrocatalytic CO2 reduction

Peng Han; Xiaomin Yu; Di Yuan; Min Kuang; Yifei Wang; Abdullah M Al-Enizi; Gengfeng Zheng

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2018.09.036

Defective graphene for electrocatalytic CO₂ reduction

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2019 Jan 15:534:332-337. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2018.09.036. Epub 2018 Sep 12.

Authors

Peng Han¹, Xiaomin Yu¹, Di Yuan¹, Min Kuang¹, Yifei Wang¹, Abdullah M Al-Enizi², Gengfeng Zheng³

Affiliations

¹ Laboratory of Advanced Materials, Department of Chemistry and Shanghai Key Laboratory of Molecular Catalysis and Innovative Materials, Fudan University, Shanghai 200438, China.
² Department of Chemistry, College of Science, King Saud University, Riyadh 11451, Saudi Arabia.
³ Laboratory of Advanced Materials, Department of Chemistry and Shanghai Key Laboratory of Molecular Catalysis and Innovative Materials, Fudan University, Shanghai 200438, China. Electronic address: gfzheng@fudan.edu.cn.

PMID: 30243173
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2018.09.036

Abstract

The rational synthesis of earth-abundant materials with excellent electrocatalytic performances plays a critical role in electrochemical CO₂ reduction (ECR) to obtain value-added chemical products or fuels. Here we demonstrate a defective graphene (DG) as such an electrocatalyst candidate via a nitrogen removal method. The graphene with a large amount of topological defects offered abundant catalytically active sites, high electronic conductivity and strong adsorption of CO₂. Attributed to these features, the DG exhibited significantly higher electrocatalytic CO₂ reduction performances with an excellent faradaic efficiency of ∼84% at -0.6 V vs. reversible hydrogen electrode and a larger current density, compared to pristine graphene, nitrogen-doped graphene and edge-rich graphene. This work suggests a promising method for further designing efficient metal-free electrocatalysts for CO₂ reduction.

Keywords: Defective graphene; Electrocatalytic CO(2) reduction; Faradaic efficiency; Nitrogen doping.