@article{40a6884be549494cbfa3db658a986810,
title = "Dopant-induced electron localization drives CO2 reduction to C2 hydrocarbons",
abstract = "The electrochemical reduction of CO2 to multi-carbon products has attracted much attention because it provides an avenue to the synthesis of value-added carbon-based fuels and feedstocks using renewable electricity. Unfortunately, the efficiency of CO2 conversion to C2 products remains below that necessary for its implementation at scale. Modifying the local electronic structure of copper with positive valence sites has been predicted to boost conversion to C2 products. Here, we use boron to tune the ratio of Cuδ+ to Cu0 active sites and improve both stability and C2-product generation. Simulations show that the ability to tune the average oxidation state of copper enables control over CO adsorption and dimerization, and makes it possible to implement a preference for the electrosynthesis of C2 products. We report experimentally a C2 Faradaic efficiency of 79 ± 2% on boron-doped copper catalysts and further show that boron doping leads to catalysts that are stable for in excess of ~40 hours while electrochemically reducing CO2 to multi-carbon hydrocarbons.",
author = "Yansong Zhou and Fanglin Che and Min Liu and Chengqin Zou and Zhiqin Liang and {De Luna}, Phil and Haifeng Yuan and Jun Li and Zhiqiang Wang and Haipeng Xie and Hongmei Li and Peining Chen and Eva Bladt and Rafael Quintero-Bermudez and Sham, {Tsun Kong} and Sara Bals and Johan Hofkens and David Sinton and Gang Chen and Sargent, {Edward H.}",
note = "Funding Information: This work was supported financially by funding from TOTAL S.A., the Ontario Research Fund: Research Excellence Program, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the CIFAR Bio-Inspired Solar Energy programme, a University of Toronto Connaught grant, the Ministry of Science, Natural Science Foundation of China (21471040, 21271055 and 21501035), the Innovation-Driven Plan in Central South University project (2017CX003), a project from State Key Laboratory of Powder Metallurgy in Central South University, the Thousand Youth Talents Plan of China and Hundred Youth Talents Program of Hunan and the China Scholarship Council programme. This work benefited from the soft X-ray microcharacterization beamline at CLS, sector 20BM at the APS and the Ontario Centre for the Characterisation of Advanced Materials at the University of Toronto. H.Y. acknowledges financial support from the Research Foundation-Flanders (FWO postdoctoral fellowship). C.Z. acknowledges support from the International Academic Exchange Fund for Joint PhD Students from Tianjin University. P.D.L. acknowledges financial support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council in the form of the Canada Graduate Scholarship—Doctoral award. S.B. and E.B. acknowledge financial support from the European Research Council (ERC Starting Grant #335078-COLOURATOMS). The authors thank B. Zhang, N. Wang, C. T. Dinh, T. Zhuang, J. Li and Y. Zhao for fruitful discussions, as well as Y. Hu and Q. Xiao from CLS, and Z. Finfrock and M. Ward from APS for their help during the course of study. Computations were performed on the SOSCIP Consortium{\textquoteright}s Blue Gene/Q computing platform. SOSCIP is funded by the Federal Economic Development Agency of Southern Ontario, the Province of Ontario, IBM Canada, Ontario Centres of Excellence, Mitacs and 15 Ontario academic member institutions. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2018, The Author(s).",
year = "2018",
month = sep,
day = "1",
doi = "10.1038/s41557-018-0092-x",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "10",
pages = "974--980",
journal = "Nature Chemistry",
issn = "1755-4330",
publisher = "Nature Publishing Group",
number = "9",
}
