Scalable synthesis of coordinatively unsaturated metal-nitrogen sites for large-scale CO2 electrolysis

Abstract

Practical electrochemical CO2-to-CO conversion requires a non-precious catalyst to react at high selectivity and high rate. Atomically dispersed, coordinatively unsaturated metal-nitrogen sites have shown great performance in CO2 electroreduction; however, their controllable and large-scale fabrication still remains a challenge. Herein, we report a general method to fabricate coordinatively unsaturated metal-nitrogen sites doped within carbon nanotubes, among which cobalt single-atom catalysts can mediate efficient CO2-to-CO formation in a membrane flow configuration, achieving a current density of 200 mA cm−2 with CO selectivity of 95.4% and high full-cell energy efficiency of 54.1%, outperforming most of CO2-to-CO conversion electrolyzers. By expanding the cell area to 100 cm2, this catalyst sustains a high-current electrolysis at 10 A with 86.8% CO selectivity and the single-pass conversion can reach 40.4% at a high CO2 flow rate of 150 sccm. This fabrication method can be scaled up with negligible decay in CO2-to-CO activity. In situ spectroscopy and theoretical results reveal the crucial role of coordinatively unsaturated metal-nitrogen sites, which facilitate CO2 adsorption and key *COOH intermediate formation.