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Nano Research 2023, 16(5): 7777-7783 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-023-5430-z
Research Article | Issue | Published: 18 February 2023

Synergetic effects of gold-doped copper nanowires with low Au content for enhanced electrocatalytic CO2 reduction to multicarbon products

Show Author's Information Zongnan Wei1,2,  Shuai Yue1,2,  Shuiying Gao2,3,  Minna Cao2,3( ),  Rong Cao2,3,4( )
Department of Chemistry, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China
State Key Laboratory of Structural Chemistry, Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Fuzhou 350002, China
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
Fujian Science & Technology Innovation Laboratory for Optoelectronic Information of China, Fuzhou 350108, China
Keywords:
Au nanoparticles, electrochemical CO2 reduction, Cu nanowires, bimetallic catalyst, multicarbon production
Topics:
Electrolytic reduction Nanowires
Cite this article:
Wei Z, Yue S, Gao S, et al. Synergetic effects of gold-doped copper nanowires with low Au content for enhanced electrocatalytic CO2 reduction to multicarbon products. Nano Research, 2023, 16(5): 7777-7783. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-023-5430-z
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Abstract Full text Electronic supplementary material About this article

As efficient catalysts of electrochemical CO2 reduction reaction (CO2RR) towards multicarbon (C2+) products, Cu-based catalysts have faced the challenges of increasing the reactive activity and selectivity. Herein, we decorated the surface of Cu nanowires (Cu NWs) with a small amount of Au nanoparticles (Au NPs) by the homo-nucleation method. When the Au to Cu mass ratio is as little as 0.7 to 99.3, the gold-doped copper nanowires (Cu-Au NWs) could effectively improve the selectivity and activity of CO2RR to C2+ resultants, with the Faradaic efficiency (FE) from 39.7% (Cu NWs) to 65.3%, and the partial current density from 7.0 (Cu NWs) to 12.1 mA/cm2 under −1.25 V vs. reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE). The enhanced electrocatalytic performance could be attributed to the following three synergetic factors. The addition of Au nanoparticles caused a rougher surface of the catalyst, which allowed for more active sites exposed. Besides, Au sites generated *CO intermediates spilling over into Cu sites with the calculated efficiency of 87.2%, which are necessary for multicarbon production. Meanwhile, the interphase electron transferred from Cu to Au induced the electron-deficient Cu, which favored the adsorption of *CO to further generate multicarbon productions. Our results uncovered the morphology, tandem, and electronic effect between Cu NWs and Au NPs facilitated the activity and selectivity of CO2RR to multicarbons.


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Electronic supplementary material
About this article

Synergetic effects of gold-doped copper nanowires with low Au content for enhanced electrocatalytic CO2 reduction to multicarbon products

Show Author's information Zongnan Wei1,2, Shuai Yue1,2, Shuiying Gao2,3, Minna Cao2,3( ), Rong Cao2,3,4( )
Department of Chemistry, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China
State Key Laboratory of Structural Chemistry, Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Fuzhou 350002, China
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
Fujian Science & Technology Innovation Laboratory for Optoelectronic Information of China, Fuzhou 350108, China

Abstract

As efficient catalysts of electrochemical CO2 reduction reaction (CO2RR) towards multicarbon (C2+) products, Cu-based catalysts have faced the challenges of increasing the reactive activity and selectivity. Herein, we decorated the surface of Cu nanowires (Cu NWs) with a small amount of Au nanoparticles (Au NPs) by the homo-nucleation method. When the Au to Cu mass ratio is as little as 0.7 to 99.3, the gold-doped copper nanowires (Cu-Au NWs) could effectively improve the selectivity and activity of CO2RR to C2+ resultants, with the Faradaic efficiency (FE) from 39.7% (Cu NWs) to 65.3%, and the partial current density from 7.0 (Cu NWs) to 12.1 mA/cm2 under −1.25 V vs. reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE). The enhanced electrocatalytic performance could be attributed to the following three synergetic factors. The addition of Au nanoparticles caused a rougher surface of the catalyst, which allowed for more active sites exposed. Besides, Au sites generated *CO intermediates spilling over into Cu sites with the calculated efficiency of 87.2%, which are necessary for multicarbon production. Meanwhile, the interphase electron transferred from Cu to Au induced the electron-deficient Cu, which favored the adsorption of *CO to further generate multicarbon productions. Our results uncovered the morphology, tandem, and electronic effect between Cu NWs and Au NPs facilitated the activity and selectivity of CO2RR to multicarbons.

Keywords: Au nanoparticles, electrochemical CO2 reduction, Cu nanowires, bimetallic catalyst, multicarbon production

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Publication history
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Acknowledgements

Publication history

Received: 17 October 2022
Revised: 06 December 2022
Accepted: 21 December 2022
Published: 18 February 2023
Issue date: May 2023

Copyright

© Tsinghua University Press 2023

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

We appreciate the financial support from the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Nos. 2017YFA0700103, 2018YFA0704502, and 2021YFA1501500), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (No. 22033008), and Fujian Science & Technology Innovation Laboratory for Optoelectronic Information of China (No. 2021ZZ103).

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