Effect of the coordination environment of Cu in CuO on the electroreduction of CO to ethylene

Cuprous oxide catalysts have attracted much attention because they exhibited high selectivity of C2+ products in CO 2 electroreduction, but the effect of the structure of catalysts on the reaction needs to be studied further. Herein, we studied the effect of the coordination number (CN) of Cu-Cu and Cu-O in Cu 2 O on the catalytic performance of CO 2 electrocatalytic reduction to C 2 H 4 . It was demonstrated that Cu-Cu CN and Cu-O CN, which could be tuned by changing the crystal surface and size of Cu 2 O, influenced the current density and faradaic efficiency (FE) of C 2 H 4 significantly. At suitable CNs, the FE of C 2 H 4 could reach 50.6% with a current density of 24.5 mA cm −2 . The coordination number (CN) of Cu-Cu and Cu-O in Cu 2 O play crucial role on the catalytic performance of CO 2 electrocatalytic reduction to C 2 H 4 . And the CN of Cu-Cu and Cu-O could be tuned by changing the crystal surface and size of Cu 2 O.