Selective electroreduction of carbon dioxide to methanol on copper selenide nanocatalysts

Dexin Yang; Qinggong Zhu; Chunjun Chen; Huizhen Liu; Zhimin Liu; Zhijuan Zhao; Xiaoyu Zhang; Shoujie Liu; Buxing Han

doi:10.1038/s41467-019-08653-9

Selective electroreduction of carbon dioxide to methanol on copper selenide nanocatalysts

Nat Commun. 2019 Feb 8;10(1):677. doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-08653-9.

Authors

Dexin Yang^{1

2}, Qinggong Zhu^{3

4}, Chunjun Chen^{1

2}, Huizhen Liu^{1

2}, Zhimin Liu^{1

2}, Zhijuan Zhao¹, Xiaoyu Zhang¹, Shoujie Liu⁵, Buxing Han^{6

7}

Affiliations

¹ Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Key Laboratory of Colloid and Interface and Thermodynamics, CAS Research/Education Center for Excellence in Molecular Sciences, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100190, Beijing, China.
² School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100049, Beijing, China.
³ Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Key Laboratory of Colloid and Interface and Thermodynamics, CAS Research/Education Center for Excellence in Molecular Sciences, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100190, Beijing, China. qgzhu@iccas.ac.cn.
⁴ School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100049, Beijing, China. qgzhu@iccas.ac.cn.
⁵ College of Chemistry and Materials Science, Anhui Normal University, 241000, Wuhu, China.
⁶ Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Key Laboratory of Colloid and Interface and Thermodynamics, CAS Research/Education Center for Excellence in Molecular Sciences, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100190, Beijing, China. hanbx@iccas.ac.cn.
⁷ School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100049, Beijing, China. hanbx@iccas.ac.cn.

Abstract

Production of methanol from electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide is very attractive. However, achieving high Faradaic efficiency with high current density using facile prepared catalysts remains to be a challenge. Herein we report that copper selenide nanocatalysts have outstanding performance for electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide to methanol, and the current density can be as high as 41.5 mA cm^-2 with a Faradaic efficiency of 77.6% at a low overpotential of 285 mV. The copper and selenium in the catalysts cooperate very well for the formation of methanol. The current density is higher than those reported up to date with very high Faradaic efficiency for producing methanol. As far as we know, this is the first work for electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide using copper selenide as the catalyst.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't