Granular protruded irregular Cu2O catalysts for efficient CO2 reduction to C2 products

The electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) to high-energy multi-carbon compounds is a significant challenge. Efforts have been made to design efficient catalysts for high selectivity toward multi-carbon products. In this study, granular protruded irregular Cuprous oxide (Cu 2 O) nanoparticles were synthesized using a simple water bath wet chemical reduction method. Polyethylene glycol (PEG) was utilized as a directing agent to control the morphology of Cu 2 O in the process. The optimized irregular Cu 2 O (ir-Cu 2 O) catalyst exhibits a remarkable faraday efficiency of 69.3% (±3.3%) for double-carbon compounds (C 2 ), which is significantly higher than that of polyhedral Cu 2 O (p-Cu 2 O) (50.4%±1.1%) synthesized without adding PEG . Cu 2 O nanoparticles with irregular shape featuring randomly distributed spherical protrusions offer more active sites for CO 2 adsorption than p-Cu 2 O catalysts, which is beneficial for the conversion of CO 2 to C 2 . In addition, in situ infrared spectra reveal that ir-Cu 2 O reduces CO 2 to C 2 mainly through the coupling of the CO* and CHO*, thereby promoting the formation of C 2 . These findings provide valuable insights for the design of high-efficiency electrocatalysts for CO 2 electroreduction to C 2 .