Facile Synthesis of Cu-Ag Bimetallic Catalysts for Enhanced CO2 Electroreduction to C2 Products

Felicia Di Costola^a^,^b, Juqin Zeng^a^,^b, Nicolò Bruno Domenico Monti^a^,^b, Silvia Nappini^c, Elena Magnano^c, Ilargi Napal^c, Francesca Risplendi^a, Marco Fontana^a^,^b, Fabrizio Pirri^a^,^b, Giancarlo Cicero^a

^aPOLITECNICO DI TORINO Department of Applied Science and Technology – DISAT

^bCenter for Sustainable Future Technologies-CSFT@PoliTo, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, IIT, Via Livorno 60, 10144 Torino, Italy

^cIstituto Officina dei Materiali - Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (IOM-CNR) Trieste, Edificio Q2 Area Science Park Strada Statale 14, km 163,5, Basovizza TS, Italy

Materials for Sustainable Development Conference (MATSUS)
Proceedings of MATSUS Fall 2024 Conference (MATSUSFall24)

#PECCO2 - Advances in (Photo)Electrochemical CO2 Conversion to Chemicals and Fuels

Lausanne, Switzerland, 2024 November 12th - 15th

Organizers: Deepak PANT, Adriano Sacco and juqin zeng

Oral, Felicia Di Costola, presentation 109
DOI: https://doi.org/10.29363/nanoge.matsusfall.2024.109
Publication date: 28th August 2024

The urgent need to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 as per the Paris Agreement [1, 2] calls for new strategies to reduce CO₂ in the atmosphere. To this aim a key approach consists of the electrocatalytic reduction of CO₂ (CO₂RR), a process which transforms CO₂ into valuable products such as hydrocarbons and alcohols. However, the thermodynamic stability of CO₂ makes this solution energy-intensive, necessitating the use of catalytic materials to enhance efficiency. Copper (Cu) is known to produce high energy-density products (C₂, C₂₊) but it shows low selectivity, complicating the final product separation [3-5]. To overcome this limitation, Copper bimetallic compounds or alloys have been explored [6]. Along these lines, our study focuses on the realization of Cu-silver (Ag) electrodes to achieve a synergistic effect that improves the performance compared with pure Cu [7-9]. The major advantage of the resulting material is the simple preparation via a sputtering deposition of Cu followed by a spontaneous galvanic displacement reaction. This eliminates the need for applying a potential for Ag deposition onto the Cu substrate. Our Cu-Ag electrodes show enhanced selectivity for C₂ products with respect to the bare Cu ones during the CO₂ electrolysis. To understand the fundamental role of Ag in increasing and stabilizing the production of ethanol and ethylene, in-situ X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) results are presented and analysed.

References:

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[2] [2] Mertens, J.; Belmans, R.; Webber, M. Why the carbon-neutral energy transition will imply the use of lots of carbon. C 2020, 6(2), 39.

[3] [3] Kortlever, R.; Shen, J.; Schouten, K.; Calle-Vallejo, F.; Koper, M. Catalysts and Reaction Pathways for the Electrochemical Reduction of Carbon Dioxide. The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters 2015, 6, 4073–4082.

[4] [4] Peterson, A.; Abild-Pedersen, F.; Studt, F.; Rossmeisl, J.; Nørskov, J. How copper catalyzes the electroreduction of carbon dioxide into hydrocarbon fuels. Energy Environ. Sci. 2010, 3(9), 1311–1315.

[5] [5] Zeng, J.; Mignosa, M.; Monti, N.; Sacco, A.; Pirri, C. Engineering copper nanoparticle electrodes for tunable electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide. Electrochimica acta 2023, 464, 142862.

[6] [6] Jia, Y.; Li, F.; Fan, K.; Sun, L. Cu-based bimetallic electrocatalysts for CO2 reduction. Advanced Powder Materials 2022, 1(1), 100012.

[7] [7] Chen, C.; Li, Y.; Yu, S.; Louisia, S.; Jin, J.; Li, M.; Ross, M.; Yang, P. Cu-Ag Tandem Catalysts for High-Rate CO2 Electrolysis toward Multicarbons. Joule 2020, 4(8), 1688–1699.

[8] [8] Huang, J.; Mensi, M.; Oveisi, E.; Mantella, V.; Buonsanti, R. Structural sensitivities in bimetallic catalysts for electrochemical CO2 reduction revealed by Ag–Cu nanodimers. Journal of the American Chemical Society 2019, 141(6), 2490–2499.

[9] [9] Clark, E.; Hahn, C.; Jaramillo, T.; Bell, A. Electrochemical CO2 Reduction over Compressively Strained CuAg Surface Alloys with Enhanced Multi-Carbon Oxygenate Selectivity. Journal of the American Chemical Society 2017, 139(44), 15848–15857.

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