Engineering the CuO-HfO2 interface toward enhanced CO2 electroreduction to C2H4

Xin Li; Lifen Li; Lijun Wang; Qineng Xia; Leiduan Hao; Xinyu Zhan; Alex W Robertson; Zhenyu Sun

doi:10.1039/d2cc01776h

Engineering the CuO-HfO₂ interface toward enhanced CO₂ electroreduction to C₂H₄

Chem Commun (Camb). 2022 Jun 30;58(53):7412-7415. doi: 10.1039/d2cc01776h.

Authors

Xin Li¹, Lifen Li², Lijun Wang¹, Qineng Xia², Leiduan Hao¹, Xinyu Zhan¹, Alex W Robertson³, Zhenyu Sun¹

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Organic-Inorganic Composites, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing, 100029, P. R. China. sunzy/mail.buct.edu.cn.
² College of Biological, Chemical Science and Engineering, Jiaxing University, Jiaxing, Zhejiang, 314001, P. R. China.
³ Department of Physics, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK.

PMID: 35695213
DOI: 10.1039/d2cc01776h

Abstract

We report significantly enhanced electrochemical CO₂ reduction (ECR) to C₂H₄ by tuning the interface of a metal oxide composite (CuO_x/HfO₂), enabling a C₂H₄ faradaic efficiency as high as 62.6 ± 1.3% at 300 mA cm^-2, in contrast to only 11.6 ± 1.6% over pure CuO. Collective knowledge from multiple control experiments, density functional theory calculations, and operando Raman study reveals that the CuO_x-HfO₂ interface greatly strengthens CO₂ adsorption and the binding of *CO for further C-C coupling to yield C₂H₄.