Dual-atom Cu2/N-doped carbon catalyst for electroreduction of CO2 to C2H4

Abstract

Electrochemical reduction of CO2 to multi-carbon products is very attractive yet particularly challenging due to the low efficiency of C-C coupling over currently used electrocatalysts. In this work, we report a dual-atom catalyst (Cu2/NC) capable of selectively promoting electro-reduction of CO2 to C2H4. The Faradaic efficiency of CO2-to-C2H4 over the Cu2/NC is up to ∼34.9% with a current density of 33.6 mA·cm−2. By contrast, its Cu single-atom counterpart only generates CO without forming C2H4. The density functional theory (DFT) calculations reveal that the Cu-Cu sites largely promote the adsorption of *CO and reduce the energy barrier of C-C coupling between the adsorbed *CO relative to that of the single Cu sites, which accounts for the high C2H4 selectivity of the Cu2/NC.