Coupling Ni–Cu atomic pair to promote CO2 electroreduction with near-unity CO selectivity

The electrocatalytic reduction of CO 2 towards CO is one of the most desirable routines to reduce atmospheric CO 2 concentration and maintain a global carbon balance. In this work, a novel porous NiCu-embedded ZIF-derived N-doped carbon nanoparticle (NiCu@NCNPs) catalyst has been identified as an active, highly selective, stable, and cost-effective catalyst in CO 2 reduction. A CO selectivity as high as 100% has been achieved on NiCu@NCNPs which is the highest reported to date. The particle current density of CO on NiCu@NCNPs is around 15 mA cm –2 under the optimized potential at −0.9 V vs. RHE. The NiCu@NCNPs electrode also exhibits excellent stability during the five sequential CO 2 electroreduction experiments. The superior catalytic performance of NiCu@NCNPs in CO 2 RR can be related to its microstructure with high electrochemical surface area and low electron transfer resistance. Furthermore, a kinetic analysis has shown the formation of intermediate *COOH is the rate-determining step in CO 2 RR towards CO. According to the results of density functional theory (DFT) calculations, a low Gibbs-free energy change (∆ G ) for the rate-determining step leads to the enhanced catalytic performance of CO 2 RR on NiCu@NCNPs.