TY - JOUR AU - Wang, Zhiqiang AU - Zu, Xiaolong AU - Li, Xiaodong AU - Li, Li AU - Wu, Yang AU - Wang, Shumin AU - Ling, Peiquan AU - Zhao, Yuan AU - Sun, Yongfu AU - Xie, Yi PY - 2022 TI - Industrial-current-density CO2-to-formate conversion with low overpotentials enabled by disorder-engineered metal sites JO - Nano Research SN - 1998-0124 SP - 6999 EP - 7007 VL - 15 IS - 8 AB - CO2 electroreduction to formate is technically feasible and economically viable, but still suffers from low selectivity and high overpotential at industrial current densities. Here, lattice-distorted metallic nanosheets with disorder-engineered metal sites are designed for industrial-current-density CO2-to-formate conversion at low overpotentials. As a prototype, richly lattice-distorted bismuth nanosheets are first constructed, where abundant disorder-engineered Bi sites could be observed by high-angle annular dark-field scanning transmission electron microscopy image. In-situ Fourier-transform infrared spectra reveal the CO2•−* group is the key intermediate, while theoretical calculations suggest the electron-enriched Bi sites could effectively lower the CO2 activation energy barrier by stabilizing the CO2•−* intermediate, further affirmed by the decreased formation energy from 0.49 to 0.39 eV. As a result, the richly lattice-distorted Bi nanosheets exhibit the ultrahigh current density of 800 mA·cm−2 with 91% Faradaic efficiencies for CO2-to-formate electroreduction, and the formate selectivity can reach nearly 100% at the current density of 200 mA·cm−2 with a very low overpotential of ca. 570 mV, outperforming most reported metal-based electrocatalysts. UR - https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-022-4335-1 DO - 10.1007/s12274-022-4335-1