Porous Palladium Nanomeshes with Enhanced Electrochemical CO2 -into-Syngas Conversion over a Wider Applied Potential

Highly efficient electrochemical carbon dioxide reduction to syngas with tunable ratios over pyridinic- nitrogen rich ultrathin carbon nanosheets

Developing nonmetallic carbon-based electrocatalysts that are affordable and have high activity and stability for carbon dioxide (CO₂) reduction to syngas is a new and challenging strategy for solving the energy crisis. Here, we prepared a highly active ultrathin nitrogen (N)-doped carbon nanosheet (UNCN) electrocatalyst. By tuning the applied potential of the UNCN-900 (900 represents the carbonization temperature) electrode, we could tune the H₂/CO ratio in clean syngas within a wide range with extra-high Faradic efficiency (FE). The maximum FE_CO reached 91%, which represented the highest value among the reported nonmetallic carbon-based electrocatalysts for CO₂ reduction to syngas. According to the results of experiments and density functional theory calculations, we proved that pyridinic-N in UNCNs-900 is the active site of the CO₂ reduction reaction (CO₂RR) and that graphitic-N may be the active site for the hydrogen evolution reaction. These results provide a useful case for electrochemical CO₂ reduction to syngas with a tunable H₂/CO ratio using nonmetallic carbon-based electrocatalysts.

Zn-Modified Co@N–C composites with adjusted Co particle size as catalysts for the efficient electroreduction of CO2

The Zn-Co@N–C composites are developed by direct annealing of Zn–Co ZIF materials. The size of Co particles could be adjusted by the introduced Zn species. The activity in CO₂RR is gradually improved with the decrease of Co particle size.