@article{Ma2025, 
author = {Guanghuan Ma and Yang Chen and Hui Li and Ying Sun and Hua Fan and Shuoshuo Jiang and Xin Cui and Tianyi Ma},
title = {Hierarchically porous N-doped carbon confined single-atom Fe catalyst for efficient electrochemical CO2 reduction},
year = {2025},
journal = {Nano Research},
volume = {18},
number = {4},
pages = {94907297},
keywords = {single-atom catalysts, Fe-N-C, CO2 reduction, porous structure, electrocatalysis},
url = {https://www.sciopen.com/article/10.26599/NR.2025.94907297},
doi = {10.26599/NR.2025.94907297},
abstract = {Electrochemical CO2 reduction reaction (CO2RR) is a promising process for reducing CO2 emissions and producing high-value chemicals. However, this process remains hindered by diffusion-limited mass transfer, low activity, and high overpotentials. Here, we controllably prepared hierarchically porous nitrogen-doped carbon, carbon nanosheets, and carbon nanotubes confined single-atom Fe catalysts for electrochemical CO2 reduction. The hierarchically porous Fe-N-C (Fe-HP) exhibited prominent performance with a Faradaic efficiency of CO (FECO) up to 80% and a CO partial current density (jCO) of −5.2 mA·cm−2 at −0.5 V vs. reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE), far outperforming the single-atom Fe on N-C nanosheets (Fe-NS) and N-C nanotubes (Fe-NT). The detailed characterizations and kinetic analysis revealed that the hierarchically porous structure accelerated the mass transfer and electron transfer processes toward single-atom Fe sites, promoting the desorption of CO and thereby enhancing CO2 reduction efficiency. This study provides a promising approach to designing efficient single-atom catalysts with porous structures for energy conversion applications.}
}