A general and facile calcination method to synthesize single-site catalysts for highly efficient electrochemical CO₂ reduction

The electrochemical CO₂ reduction reaction (CO₂RR) has received widespread attention as a promising method for producing sustainable chemicals and mitigating the global warming. Here, we demonstrate a general and facile synthetic route for the metal-nitrogen-carbon (M-N-C) type catalyst by simply calcinating metal acetate and urea with commercial carbon black, which have potential application in CO₂RR. The synthesized Ni-NC-600 catalyst has the structure of single Ni atom coordinated with one N atom and three C atoms (Ni-N₁C₃), which is suggested by X-ray absorption spectroscopy. The Ni-NC-600 catalyst exhibits high CO₂RR catalytic performance and a high CO Faraday efficiency above 98% in a wide potential range from −0.7 to −1.3 V (vs. reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE)), superior to most of the reported Ni-N-C catalysts. This work has developed a facile strategy to synthesize high performance CO₂RR catalyst.