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Enhanced electroreduction of CO2 to C2+ fuels by the synergetic effect of polyaniline/CuO nanosheets hybrids

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Abstract

Electrochemically converting CO2 to value-added multi-carbon (C2+) fuels and chemicals is a favorable way to achieve carbon neutrality. Herein, polyaniline/CuO nanosheets (PANI/CuO NSs) hybrid electrocatalysts are developed in order to achieve superior C2+ selectivity by imparting PANI functional component to the CuO NSs. The decorated PANI nanoparticles (NPs) can effectively stabilize the *CO intermediates and increase their coverage on the active Cu sites, which facilitates the C–C coupling to form multi-carbon products. Benefiting from the synergetic effect of PANI and CuO NSs, best Faradaic efficiency (FE) for C2+ product up to 66.4% at −1.6 V vs. reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE) in a H-cell measurement and 60.0% at 400 mA·cm−2 in a flow cell measurement are demonstrated by PANI/CuO NSs-25 sample. More importantly, the C2+ selectivity keeps stable even in a continuous measurement time period of 92 h in H-cell measurement. The present study may provide more insights for designing efficient hybrid materials toward superior C2+ production from electrocatalytic CO2 reduction.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the Analysis and Testing Center in Beijing Institute of Technology for technical support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Cluster Science, Ministry of Education, Beijing Key Laboratory of Photoelectronic/Electrophotonic Conversion Materials, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, 100081, China

    Lian Ma, Qinghong Geng, Longlong Fan, Jun-Xuan Li & Cuiling Li

  2. CAS Key Laboratory of Bio-inspired Materials and Interfacial Science, Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China

    Dawei Du, Junli Bai & Cuiling Li

  3. School of Future Technology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Junli Bai

  4. Binzhou Institute of Technology, Binzhou, 256600, China

    Cuiling Li

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  1. Lian Ma
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  2. Qinghong Geng
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  3. Longlong Fan
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Correspondence to Cuiling Li.

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Ma, L., Geng, Q., Fan, L. et al. Enhanced electroreduction of CO2 to C2+ fuels by the synergetic effect of polyaniline/CuO nanosheets hybrids. Nano Res. 16, 9065–9072 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-023-5703-1

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