CO2 electrolysis to multicarbon products at activities greater than 1 A cm−2

By F. P. García de Arquer, C. Dinh, A. Ozden, Joshua Wicks, C. McCallum, Ahmad R. Kirmani, Dae-Hyun Nam, Christine M. Gabardo, A. Seifitokaldani, Xue Wang and 7 more. Science, 2020

1,144 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Graceful choreography for CO2 and H2O One challenge for efficient electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2) is that the gas is hydrophobic, but many of its desirable reactions require water (H2O). García de Arquer et al. addressed this problem by combining a copper electrocatalyst with an ionomer assembly that intersperses sulfonate-lined paths for the H2O with fluorocarbon channels for the CO2. The electrode architecture enables production of two-carbon products such as ethylene and ethanol at current densities just over an ampere per square centimeter. Science, this issue p. 661 Electrode architecture reconciles the hydrophobic nature of CO2 with the need for nearby water to reduce it to ethylene. Electrolysis offers an attractive route to upgrade greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2) to valuable fuels and feedstocks; however, productivity is often limited by gas diffusion through a liquid electrolyte to the surface of the catalyst. Here, we present a catalyst:ionomer bulk heterojunction (CIBH) architecture that decouples gas, ion, and electron transport. The CIBH comprises a metal and a superfine ionomer layer with hydrophobic and hydrophilic functionalities that extend gas and ion transport from tens of nanometers to the micrometer scale. By applying this design strategy, we achieved CO2 electroreduction on copper in 7 M potassium hydroxide electrolyte (pH ≈ 15) with an ethylene partial current density of 1.3 amperes per square centimeter at 45% cathodic energy efficiency.

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

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c4d324279e9cfb839603144cbca3beb7c2821517

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In Catalysis

1. P. Strasser
2. A. Varela
3. Karen Chan
4. J. Rossmeisl
5. A. Bagger
6. B. Roldán Cuenya
7. Jens K. Nørskov

In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

1. P. Strasser
2. I. Stephens
3. B. Roldán Cuenya
4. Karen Chan
5. M. Koper
6. A. Varela
7. S. Boettcher
8. J. Rossmeisl

In Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

1. P. Strasser
2. Karen Chan
3. A. Varela
4. B. Roldán Cuenya
5. I. Stephens
6. J. Rossmeisl
7. M. Koper
8. A. Bagger

Citations in the corpus

• 2022 roadmap on low temperature electrochemical CO2 reduction (2022, methodology): “On a case-by-case basis, alternative GDL substrates [51], porous fillers for the catalyst layer [199], and functionalized polymeric”
• Electrochemical CO2 Reduction to Ethanol with Copper-Based Catalysts (2021, result): “Regarding the most selective Cu-doped Carbon systems, the largest FEmax values were obtained in H-cells at very low current densities (jEtOH = −1 to −7 mA/cm 2) while at the largest current densities in flow cells (jEtOH= −120 to −150 mA/cm 2) FEmax values were below 52%.”