We discovered the correlation between the B-site metals of La0.6Sr0.4Co1-xFexO3-δ and their coke resistance during high-temperature CO2 electrolysis. Elevated Fe/Co ratios enhance the coke resistance by suppressing excessive oxygen vacancy formation and Co/Fe exsolution. This underlying mechanism enables highly stable CO2 electrolysis performance and a tandem reactor for multi-carbon product synthesis with high CO2 utilization efficiency. Details can be found in Adv. Sci..
Congratulations to Huiying, Fan, Jundong, and Quan for winning the special prize in the Challenge Cup competition which was held by Beihang University on Nov 9 this year. The team consists of ten undergraduate and graduate students from Prof. Yanguang Li's group and our group, focusing on catalyst synthesis, membrane fabrication, and device scale-up for CO2 electroreduction.
We investigated the correlation between the 2-position substituent lengths of benzimidazole-based Cu coordination polymers and their acidic CO2 electroreduction performance. We presented that lengthening the substituent reduces local proton concentrations and Cu-Cu coordination numbers of the exsolved metallic Cu. This promotes the conversion of CO2-derived CO into multi-carbon products and CH4. Details can be found in Nat. Commun.
We devised a trilayer polymer electrolyte comprising a perforated anion exchange membrane and a bipolar membrane to facilitate alkaline CO2 electroreduction. This trilayer polymer electrolyte enables the coexistence of high alkalinity near the catalyst surface and the H+ flux at the interface between the perforated anion exchange membrane and the cation exchange layer of the bipolar membrane, conditions favoring both CO2 reduction to multicarbon products and (bi)carbonate removal in KOH-fed membrane electrode assembly reactors. Read the full paper in Angew. Chem.
Published in ACS Energy Lett., our recent study on Cu-catalyzed bicarbonate electrolysis found that the Faradaic efficiency toward multicarbon products is determined by the electrolyte buffering capacity, bicarbonate availability, and carbonate mass transport. By controlling the electrolyte concentration, catalyst layer thickness and porosity, we report an optimized Faradaic efficiency of ~48% at 60 mA cm-2. It was achieved using 0.1 M KHCO3 and a Cu2O/10 wt% carbon precatalyst.
We recently discovered that the kinetic retardation caused by the strong hydrophobicity of quaternary ammonium group functionalized polynorbornene prolongs the *CO intermediate residence on Cu and thereby increases the Faradaic efficiency and partial current density for C2+ products from CO2 reduction by a factor of 2. A 90% C2+ Faradaic efficiency at a 223 mA cm-2 partial current density was achieved as a result. Read the paper at Angewandte Chemie.
