Proceedings of nanoGe Fall Meeting 2021 (NFM21)
Publication date: 23rd September 2021
The electrochemical reduction of CO2 on copper catalysts has proven to be unique and complex, as copper is the only known metal that can induce C-C coupling enabling it to produce C2+ products such as ethylene and ethanol. This versatility offers on the one hand a lot of potential in CO2 valorization but on the other hand brings complexity in understanding the underlying chemical process. We have used in situ time-resolved surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (TR-SERS) to monitor catalyst reconstruction and formation of intermediates on the copper surface as function of potential and time. We have used electrodeposited copper dendrites (CuED) as cathode, which increases the roughness of the surface resulting in significantly enhanced Raman signal. With this technique we were able to record a ‘time-lapse’ of various surface events by assigning specific surface species to the detected potential and time-dependent vibrations which allowed us to elucidate low overpotential CO2 activation.