Selective Electrochemical Reduction Of CO₂ On Cu₂O_Nws/Ni_f

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the most notorious greenhouse gas,released by both natural and artificial processes. It is also a necessary material for the growth of all earth's plants and for many industrial processes. Therefore, reducing CO2 production and converting CO2 into useful materials seems to be necessary, indeed critical, for environmental protection, and various governments worldwide have signaled their concern by increasing their investment in research to address the CO2 issue. Normally, CO2 conversion can be achieved by chemical methods, by photocatalytic and electrocatalytic reduction, and by a few other means, while the electrochemical catalysis approaches has attracted great attention for its controllable, environmental and easy for scale-up applications. Copper is one of the widely studied catalysts, it can be classified into several types:bulk Cu electrode, Cu-electrodeposited GCE, in situ electrodeposited Cu electrode, and Cu-coated GDE. Aside from low hydrocarbons such as CH4, C2H4, CO, HCOOH, alcohols and esters, some relatively high hydrocarbons—such as paraffins can also be formed using Cu electrodes. But its application is limited by its high overpotential and inactivation during electrolysis. The content of the paper are as follows:1. The Cu2ONws/Nif electrode was fabricated by electrodeposition using Ni foam as subtract. It was characterized by SEM and XRD, and its application to electroreduction of CO2. SEM reveal that there were large amount of nanowire on the surface of the Cu2Cws/Nif with a well-defined interconnected structure,and XRD indicated that the electrode contain Cu2O,which may promote its catalytic activity.2. Comparison with the Cu, Cuf and Cu/Nif, the Cu2ONws/Nif was more favorable to CO2 reduction to CO in which it improved current density and had a more onset potential. The maximum current efficiency of carbon monoxide reached 38% at -1.4V vs.SCE for Cu2ONws/Nif which was higher 14 times than Cu, Cuf and Cu/Nif.3. Effect of electrodeposition time, annealing time and annealing temperature were to investigated, which indicated that the best catalytic activity of Cu2ONws/Nif was which electrodeposition time was 2000s and annealing 12 h under 500?. The maximum current efficiency of carbon monoxide reached 38% at-1.4 V vs.SCE. As the more lattice defects and active area, which was related to the high density and high aspect ratio nanowires on the Cu2ONws/Nif.