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Best practices for electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide

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Carbon capture, utilization and storage, a fundamental process to a sustainable future, relies on a suite of technologies among which electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide is essential. Here, we discuss the issues faced when reporting performance of this technology and recommend how to move forward at both materials and device levels.

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Fig. 1: Schematic illustration of the basic configurations of an electrochemical cell for a CO2 reduction experiment.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank C. A. G. Rodriguez at Technical University of Denmark for creating the figure. B.S. acknowledges funding from the Villum Foundation V-SUSTAIN grant 9455 to the Villum Center for the Science of Sustainable Fuels and Chemicals and funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 85144 (SELECT-CO2). M.R. acknowledges the Institut Universitaire de France (IUF) for partial financial support. F.J. thanks the financial support by the US National Science Foundation (award no. 2119435).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark

    Brian Seger

  2. Université Paris Cité, CNRS, Laboratoire d’Electrochimie Moléculaire, Paris, France

    Marc Robert

  3. Institut Universitaire de France (IUF), Paris, France

    Marc Robert

  4. Center for Catalytic Science and Technology, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA

    Feng Jiao

Authors
  1. Brian Seger
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  2. Marc Robert
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  3. Feng Jiao
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Correspondence to Feng Jiao.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Seger, B., Robert, M. & Jiao, F. Best practices for electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide. Nat Sustain 6, 236–238 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-01034-z

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