Surface Nitrogen-Injection Engineering for High Formation Rate of CO2 Reduction to Formate

Han Cheng; Si Liu; Jingda Zhang; Tianpei Zhou; Nan Zhang; Xu-Sheng Zheng; Wangsheng Chu; Zhenpeng Hu; Changzheng Wu; Yi Xie

doi:10.1021/acs.nanolett.0c02144

Surface Nitrogen-Injection Engineering for High Formation Rate of CO₂ Reduction to Formate

Nano Lett. 2020 Aug 12;20(8):6097-6103. doi: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.0c02144. Epub 2020 Jul 16.

Authors

Han Cheng¹, Si Liu¹, Jingda Zhang², Tianpei Zhou¹, Nan Zhang³, Xu-Sheng Zheng³, Wangsheng Chu³, Zhenpeng Hu², Changzheng Wu^{1

4}, Yi Xie^{1

4}

Affiliations

¹ Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Science at the Microscale, CAS Center for Excellence in Nanoscience, iChEM (Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Materials), and CAS Key Laboratory of Mechanical Behavior and Design of Materials, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, P.R. China.
² School of Physics, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071, P.R. China.
³ National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230029, P.R. China.
⁴ Institute of Energy, Hefei Comprehensive National Science Center, Hefei, Anhui 230026, P.R. China.

PMID: 32628023
DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.0c02144

Abstract

In this study, we highlight that surface nitrogen-injection engineering brings a high formation rate for CO₂ reduction to formate, which is high level among the reported electrocatalysts. Surface nitrogen-injection engineering can increase the amounts of active sites and optimize the electronic structure simultaneously. Taking an example of SnS₂ precursors, the final-obtained surface N-enriched Sn(S) nanosheets (denoted as N-Sn(S) nanosheets) exhibit a 5-fold of current density and 2.45-fold of Faradaic efficiency than pristine SnS₂ derived Sn(S) nanosheets (denoted as Sn(S) nanosheets). On account of high activity and selectivity, the formation rate of formate is 14 times than that of pristine samples and reaches up to 1358 μmol h^-1 cm^-2. Moreover, this strategy is proven to be general to other metal sulfides, such as CuS and In₂S₃. We anticipate that surface nitrogen-injection engineering offers new avenues to rational design of advanced electrocatalysts for CO₂ reduction reaction.

Keywords: CO2 reduction; Formate production; Formation rate; General strategy; Surface nitrogen-injection engineering.