EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Tailored catalyst microenvironments for CO2 electroreduction to multicarbon products on copper using bilayer ionomer coatings

Chanyeon Kim, Justin C. Bui, Xiaoyan Luo, Jason K. Cooper, Ahmet Kusoglu, Adam Z. Weber and Alexis T. Bell ()
Additional contact information
Chanyeon Kim: University of California
Justin C. Bui: University of California
Xiaoyan Luo: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Jason K. Cooper: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Ahmet Kusoglu: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Adam Z. Weber: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Alexis T. Bell: University of California

Nature Energy, 2021, vol. 6, issue 11, 1026-1034

Abstract: Abstract Electrochemical carbon dioxide reduction (CO2R) provides a promising pathway for sustainable generation of fuels and chemicals. Copper (Cu) electrocatalysts catalyse CO2R to valuable multicarbon (C2+) products, but their selectivity depends on the local microenvironment near the catalyst surface. Here we systematically explore and optimize this microenvironment using bilayer cation- and anion-conducting ionomer coatings to control the local pH (via Donnan exclusion) and CO2/H2O ratio (via ionomer properties), respectively. When this tailored microenvironment is coupled with pulsed electrolysis, further enhancements in the local ratio of CO2/H2O and pH are achieved, leading to selective C2+ production, which increases by 250% (with 90% Faradaic efficiency and only 4% H2) compared with static electrolysis over bare Cu. These results underscore the importance of tailoring the catalyst microenvironment as a means of improving overall performance in electrochemical syntheses.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-021-00920-8 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:natene:v:6:y:2021:i:11:d:10.1038_s41560-021-00920-8

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

DOI: 10.1038/s41560-021-00920-8

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Energy is currently edited by Fouad Khan

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

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:nat:natene:v:6:y:2021:i:11:d:10.1038_s41560-021-00920-8