Abstract
Electrocatalytic CO2 reduction reaction has been considered as a promising route to realize carbon cyclic utilization and renewable energy storage. Recently, Zn-based catalysts have attracted much attention due to their earth-abundant reserve and low cost, which can meet the demand for commercial applications at a large scale. Herein, ZnO catalyst (ZIF-8-D-ZnO) was synthesized by pyrolysis of ZIF-8 precursor for electrocatalytic reduction of CO2. The ZIF-8-D-ZnO catalyst exhibits an excellent catalytic activity for CO production than rod-like ZnO and Zn foil catalysts, with faradaic efficiency of 86.7 % and geometric current density of 16.1 mA cm−2 at −1.2 V (vs. RHE). Moreover, the overpotential over ZIF-8-D-ZnO is much lower than that of analogous catalysts. The results suggest that the grain boundaries within the porous structure facilitate CO2 electroreduction over ZIF-8-D-ZnO due to the introduction of new catalytically active sites. This work provides experimental evidence for the design of efficient Zn-based materials for CO2 electrocatalytic reduction.
Graphical abstract
ZIF-8-D-ZnO catalyst with porous structure and grain boundaries exhibits much higher CO faradaic efficiency and current density than ZnO-R and Zn foil catalysts.
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Acknowledgements
We gratefully thank Prof. Guoxiong Wang and Dunfeng Gao at the DICP for fruitful discussions.
Funding
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant 22002121), the Open Project Fund of State Key Laboratory of catalysis (N-19-04), and the Funds of National Undergraduate Training Program for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (grant 202010656015).
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Hu, Y., Wu, H., Yang, Y. et al. ZIF-8 derived porous ZnO with grain boundaries for efficient CO2 electroreduction. J Nanopart Res 23, 133 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11051-021-05271-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11051-021-05271-9