A universal route to graft highly dispersed cobalt phthalocyanine on porous carbon for efficient CO2 electroreduction

Cobalt phthalocyanine (CoPc) has drawn increasing attention in CO2 electroreduction to CO due to its clear coordination structure (Co–N4–C) and high selectivity. However, its performance is severely restrained by its poor stability and low conductivity. Herein, a promising catalyst for dispersing CoPc on three-dimensional porous carbon (PC) was prepared via a pyrolysis procedure using NaCl as the template. Benefiting from the high intrinsic activity and large exposure of active sites, as well as the unique carbon architecture with facilitated mass transportation, the derived CoPc/PC catalyst shows impressive performance for CO2 electroreduction. The CO faradaic efficiency achieves a maximum value of 95% accompanied by a CO partial current density of 20.5 mA cm−2. The study paves a new avenue for the fabrication of high-efficiency molecular catalysts for CO2 conversion.