Heterogeneous electrochemical CO₂ reduction using nonmetallic carbon-based catalysts: current status and future challenges

Abstract

Electrochemical CO reduction (ECR) offers an important pathway for renewable energy storage and fuels production. It still remains a challenge in designing highly selective, energy-efficient, robust, and cost-effective electrocatalysts to facilitate this kinetically slow process. Metal-free carbon-based materials have features of low cost, good electrical conductivity, renewability, diverse structure, and tunability in surface chemistry. In particular, surface functionalization of carbon materials, for example by doping with heteroatoms, enables access to unique active site architectures for CO adsorption and activation, leading to interesting catalytic performances in ECR. We aim to provide a comprehensive review of this category of metal-free catalysts for ECR, providing discussions and/or comparisons among different nonmetallic catalysts, and also possible origin of catalytic activity. Fundamentals and some future challenges are also described.

An overview of Cu-based heterogeneous electrocatalysts for CO2reduction

“…The selectivity of C 2 and C 3 products in 0.1 M KHCO 3 was up to 60%. By analysis with ex situ secondary-ion mass spectrometry (SIMS), they found that <1% of the original 18 O content remained in the sample aer the CO 2 reduction reaction and believed that the grain boundary was more likely responsible for the high activity, as proposed by the Kanan group. Similarly to the Yeo group, they also observed the rapid re-oxidation of oxide-derived Cu with in situ Raman spectroscopy.…”

“…In recent years, CO 2 reduction to fuels and chemical products has been investigated by various methods, such as biochemical approaches, 4 building blocks for organic synthesis, 5 thermal hydrogenation, [6][7][8][9][10][11] photocatalysis, [12][13][14] electrocatalysis [15][16][17][18] and dry reforming with methane. 19,20 Among them, electrochemical (EC) reduction has attracted much attention.…”

Hybrid 2D Dual‐Metal–Organic Frameworks for Enhanced Water Oxidation Catalysis

“…In view of the evergrowing concern about global warming and environmental crisis, there is urgent need for extensively utilizing clean and sustainable alternatives (e.g., solar energy, wind energy) to fossil fuels, which can be addressed by developing cost‐effective and efficient energy conversion and storage technologies (e.g., fuel cells, batteries, water splitting) . With regard to electrochemical water splitting and metal–air batteries, oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is undoubtedly deemed as one of the key processes for these applications.…”

Nanocellulose: Recent advances and its prospects in environmental remediation

“…The high reactivity and high surface area of nanomaterials are some of the notable features which provide an advantage in environmental remediation over other conventional alternatives [ 1 ]. Promising materials such as graphitic carbon nitride [ 2 – 3 ], carbon nanodots [ 4 ], and two-dimensional carbon-based nanocomposites [ 5 – 7 ] are a few trending nanomaterials that have already found extensive applications in both environmental remediation and energy generation. In the past, carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have received a great deal of attention as materials for environmental remediation due to their impressive mechanical properties and superior adsorption capability.…”