Nature and Distribution of Stable Subsurface Oxygen in Copper Electrodes During Electrochemical CO₂ Reduction

Abstract

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Standards and Protocols for Data Acquisition and Reporting for Studies of the Electrochemical Reduction of Carbon Dioxide

“…These studies have stimulated efforts aimed at understanding the origin of the seemingly superior catalytic activity of these oxide-derived catalysts compared to polycrystalline Cu foils. [65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72] However it has not been clearly demonstrated if the enhanced activity is due to an increase in the total surface area of the catalyst or to an enhancement of the intrinsic activity. [61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68] Using the metrics discussed above, we show in Figure 10 an example of an activity comparison 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 between Cu standards (polycrystalline Cu foil and epitaxial Cu thin films) and a plasma treated Cu catalyst for which surface area measurements are available.…”

On the Oxidation State of Cu2O upon Electrochemical CO2 Reduction: An XPS Study

“…The validation of these conflicting lines of thought is complicated by the high surface roughness intrinsic to these Cu 2 O catalysts, since their eventual reduction to Cu 0 would translate into an abundance of [100](‐stepped) analogous domains and/or in a high surface pH that would justify the CO 2 ‐to‐ethylene selectivity displayed by these materials. Additionally, their correspondingly large content of surface grain boundaries prone to re‐oxidation upon contact with trace amounts of oxygen (e. g., during sample transfer for post‐mortem characterization) could cause the apparent presence of remaining (sub‐)surface oxides asserted in the above studies . Thus, to suppress the ambiguous effects of the surface roughness on the oxide's selectivity and post‐mortem oxidation state, in this work we prepared quasi‐planar, low‐roughness Cu 2 O thin films (TFs) and used them as CO 2 ‐reduction electrocatalysts.…”

CO2 Reduction of Hybrid Cu2O–Cu/Gas Diffusion Layer Electrodes and their Integration in a Cu‐based Photoelectrocatalytic Cell

“…Research on Cu-based electrodes is quicklyi ncreasing [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35] owing to their photoactive properties, natural copper abundance, good environmental acceptability,l ow thermal emittance,n on-toxicity,a nd simple and low-cost production process. [36][37][38] The interest in the Cu 2 Oc atalysth as increased after the electrodeposited polycrystalline Cu 2 Oh as been reported to be stable foroperations in aqueouss olutions.…”