Selective CO 2 Electrolysis on Cu-on-MgO/Mg(OH) 2 Catalyst through Enhanced CO 2 Adsorption

Electrochemically drove CO 2 reduction reaction (CO 2 RR) to value added products provides a promising route towards carbon neutrality. However, insufficient CO 2 RR performance and high energy barrier remain to be obstacles in process scale-up. In this work, the activation of CO 2 molecules for the CO 2 RR is tackled by incorporating magnesium oxide/hydroxide as a support material for copper to form a supported catalyst, i.e., Cu-on-MgO/Mg(OH) 2 . Compare with commercial copper nanoparticles, significant improvement in CO 2 activation, reflected by its onset potential, was observed. Under zero-gap reaction conditions, both the partial current density and Faradaic efficiency (FE) of C 2 products was enhanced. From detailed materials characterization and in-situ temperature resolved infrared spectroscopy, valuable complementary information of the surface species can be observed. The impact of MgO to the local pH of the cathode will also be discussed. To encapsulate, we report a much enhanced CO 2 RR to C 2 performance using the Cu-on-MgO/Mg(OH) 2 catalyst and aim to decipher its role in CO 2 activation.