Highly selective plasma-activated copper catalysts for carbon dioxide reduction to ethylene

By H. Mistry, A. Varela, C. Bonifacio, I. Zegkinoglou, I. Sinev, Yong-Wook Choi, K. Kisslinger, E. Stach, Judith C. Yang, P. Strasser and 1 more. Nature Communications, 2016

987 citations recorded by the source corpus.

There is an urgent need to develop technologies that use renewable energy to convert waste products such as carbon dioxide into hydrocarbon fuels. Carbon dioxide can be electrochemically reduced to hydrocarbons over copper catalysts, although higher efficiency is required. We have developed oxidized copper catalysts displaying lower overpotentials for carbon dioxide electroreduction and record selectivity towards ethylene (60%) through facile and tunable plasma treatments. Herein we provide insight into the improved performance of these catalysts by combining electrochemical measurements with microscopic and spectroscopic characterization techniques. Operando X-ray absorption spectroscopy and cross-sectional scanning transmission electron microscopy show that copper oxides are surprisingly resistant to reduction and copper+ species remain on the surface during the reaction. Our results demonstrate that the roughness of oxide-derived copper catalysts plays only a partial role in determining the catalytic performance, while the presence of copper+ is key for lowering the onset potential and enhancing ethylene selectivity. Carbon dioxide electroreduction is a promising route to hydrocarbon synthesis, but more efficient and selective catalysts are needed. Here the authors show that plasma-activated copper can catalyse the reduction of carbon dioxide to ethylene with high efficiency and reveal cationic copper as the active site.

Subfields: Catalysis, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/30d3384cd168601bcbcb113c265010ef17e67f66

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Catalysis

1. C. Dinh
2. Peidong Yang
3. A. Züttel

In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

1. Yi Cui
2. Yuzhang Li
3. F. P. García de Arquer
4. Peidong Yang
5. Edward H. Sargent
6. C. Dinh
7. Golam Kibria
8. O. Voznyy

In Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

1. C. Dinh
2. Edward H. Sargent
3. Yi Cui
4. Peidong Yang
5. Phil de Luna
6. David Sinton

Citations in the corpus

• Electrochemical reconstruction of ZnO for selective reduction of CO2 to CO (2020, background): “, oxidation state [23] and crystal structure [27,28]).”