Oxidation of metallic Cu by supercritical CO2 and control synthesis of amorphous nano-metal catalysts for CO2 electroreduction

Chunjun Chen, Xupeng Yan, Yahui Wu, Xiudong Zhang, Shoujie Liu, Fanyu Zhang, Xiaofu Sun, Qinggong Zhu, Lirong Zheng, Jing Zhang, Xueqing Xing, Zhonghua Wu and Buxing Han ()
Additional contact information
Chunjun Chen: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Xupeng Yan: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Yahui Wu: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Xiudong Zhang: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Shoujie Liu: Chemistry and Chemical Engineering of Guangdong Laboratory
Fanyu Zhang: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Xiaofu Sun: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Qinggong Zhu: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Lirong Zheng: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Jing Zhang: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Xueqing Xing: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Zhonghua Wu: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Buxing Han: Chinese Academy of Sciences

Nature Communications, 2023, vol. 14, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract Amorphous nano-metal catalysts often exhibit appealing catalytic properties, because the intrinsic linear scaling relationship can be broken. However, accurate control synthesis of amorphous nano-metal catalysts with desired size and morphology is a challenge. In this work, we discover that Cu(0) could be oxidized to amorphous CuxO species by supercritical CO2. The formation process of the amorphous CuxO is elucidated with the aid of machine learning. Based on this finding, a method to prepare Cu nanoparticles with an amorphous shell is proposed by supercritical CO2 treatment followed by electroreduction. The unique feature of this method is that the size of the particles with amorphous shell can be easily controlled because their size depends on that of the original crystal Cu nanoparticles. Moreover, the thickness of the amorphous shell can be easily controlled by CO2 pressure and/or treatment time. The obtained amorphous Cu shell exhibits high selectivity for C2+ products with the Faradaic efficiency of 84% and current density of 320 mA cm−2. Especially, the FE of C2+ oxygenates can reach up to 65.3 %, which is different obviously from the crystalline Cu catalysts.

Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-36721-8 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:14:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-023-36721-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-36721-8

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().