Publication date: 11th October 2022
Copper catalysts are unique in CO2 electrochemical reduction as they allow
the formation of C2+ products [1]. Thus, selective and efficient catalysts are needed to
open new routes to synthesize fuels and chemicals, as product distribution varies
significantly depending on material’s synthesis [2][3]. The search of nanostructuring and promotional effects in copper-based catalysts able to drive the selectivity of the CO2 reduction reaction is one of the most active fields in electrocatalysis. This work unveils that halogen-promoted copper systems can exhibit enhanced performance towards highly reduced products (HRP, those requiring the transfer of more than 2e−) for certain copper matrices and halogenation degrees. The controlled chlorination of metallic Cu, CuO, and Cu2O foils resulted on surfaces with starkly different chemical natures, among which Cu2O-based systems yielded an increasingly high Faradaic efficiency towards HRP as the surface concentration of chlorine after reaction rose. The latter was maximized for mild chlorination treatments leading to chloride and oxide phases coexisting in comparable amounts in the fresh materials. Those results suggest that the presence of residual oxygen is required for generating Cl-Cu sites stable under operation conditions, which are responsible of promoting HRP generation. Here we present how our computational simulations bring a better understanding of how chlorine enhances the catalytic performance of copper catalysts. DFT-based methods are used to characterize how Cl incorporates, which effect it has on material’s physical properties, and also how it
lowers the energy barriers of some key steps of the reaction mechanisms towards those HRP.
This work was financed by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation
(RTI2018-101394-B-I00, Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence CEX2019-000925-S
10.13039/501100011033. The Barcelona Supercomputing Centre – MareNostrum
(BSC-RES) is acknowledged for providing generous computational resources.
nanoGe is a prestigious brand of successful science conferences that are developed along the year in different areas of the world since 2009. Our worldwide conferences cover cutting-edge materials topics like perovskite solar cells, photovoltaics, optoelectronics, solar fuel conversion, surface science, catalysis and two-dimensional materials, among many others.
Previously nanoGe Spring Meeting (NSM) and nanoGe Fall Meeting (NFM), MATSUS is a multiple symposia conference focused on a broad set of topics of advanced materials preparation, their fundamental properties, and their applications, in fields such as renewable energy, photovoltaics, lighting, semiconductor quantum dots, 2-D materials synthesis, charge carriers dynamics, microscopy and spectroscopy semiconductors fundamentals, etc.
International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics
International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics (HOPV) is celebrated yearly in May. The main topics are the development, function and modeling of materials and devices for hybrid and organic solar cells. The field is now dominated by perovskite solar cells but also other hybrid technologies, as organic solar cells, quantum dot solar cells, and dye-sensitized solar cells and their integration into devices for photoelectrochemical solar fuel production.
Asia-Pacific International Conference on Perovskite, Organic Photovoltaics and Optoelectronics
The main topics of the Asia-Pacific International Conference on Perovskite, Organic Photovoltaics and Optoelectronics (IPEROP) are discussed every year in Asia-Pacific for gathering the recent advances in the fields of material preparation, modeling and fabrication of perovskite and hybrid and organic materials. Photovoltaic devices are analyzed from fundamental physics and materials properties to a broad set of applications. The conference also covers the developments of perovskite optoelectronics, including light-emitting diodes, lasers, optical devices, nanophotonics, nonlinear optical properties, colloidal nanostructures, photophysics and light-matter coupling.
The International Conference on Perovskite Thin Film Photovoltaics Perovskite Photonics and Optoelectronics (NIPHO) is the best place to hear the latest developments in perovskite solar cells as well as on recent advances in the fields of perovskite light-emitting diodes, lasers, optical devices, nanophotonics, nonlinear optical properties, colloidal nanostructures, photophysics and light-matter coupling.