Proceedings of MATSUS23 & Sustainable Technology Forum València (STECH23) (MATSUS23)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.29363/nanoge.matsus.2023.031
Publication date: 22nd December 2022
The electrochemical reduction reaction of CO2 (CO2RR) into valuable chemical products is foreseen as a promising lever to move from fossil to renewable energy with the benefit of closing the carbon look. Copper is a unique catalyst for this reaction as it generates products beyond CO, such as CH4 or C2H4. While polycrystalline copper is unselective, faceting copper at the nanoscale has proven to improve its selectivity while retaining attractive activity.1,2 However, its severe lack of stability during operation dramatically hampers its further use on the industrial scale. Indeed, Cu surfaces suffer from drastic restructuring which often results in a performance loss.3,4
Herein, we propose the encapsulation of Cu nanocatalysts with a thin amorphous oxide coating as one promising solution against their structural changes during CO2RR. Specifically, we utilize colloidal atomic layer deposition (c-ALD) to grow an alumina (AlOx) shell with tunable thickness around 7 nm copper spheres to form well-defined Cu@AlOx core@shell structures. We find that the improved morphological stability of the Cu@AlOx is reached when full encapsulation is achieved. To understand the mechanisms behind the observed behavior, we correlate the shift in product distribution with observations from ex situ electron microscopy and operando X-ray absorption spectroscopy. Overall, this work offers the big opportunity to create stable Cu catalysts during CO2RR which is currently one of the most important challenges in the field.
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.