High-Curvature Transition-Metal Chalcogenide Nanostructures with a Pronounced Proximity Effect Enable Fast and Selective CO2 Electroreduction
- 25 May 2020
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Wiley in Angewandte Chemie-International Edition
- Vol. 59 (22), 8706-8712
- https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.201912348
Abstract
A considerable challenge in the conversion of carbon dioxide into useful fuels comes from the activation of CO2 to CO2.- or other intermediates, which often requires precious-metal catalysts, high overpotentials, and/or electrolyte additives (e.g., ionic liquids). We report a microwave heating strategy for synthesizing a transition-metal chalcogenide nanostructure that efficiently catalyzes CO2 electroreduction to carbon monoxide (CO). We found that the cadmium sulfide (CdS) nanoneedle arrays exhibit an unprecedented current density of 212 mA cm(-2) with 95.5 +/- 4.0 % CO Faraday efficiency at -1.2 V versus a reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE; without iR correction). Experimental and computational studies show that the high-curvature CdS nanostructured catalyst has a pronounced proximity effect which gives rise to large electric field enhancement, which can concentrate alkali-metal cations resulting in the enhanced CO2 electroreduction efficiency.Funding Information
- National Natural Science Foundation of China (21431006)
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