Copper-based Nano Materials For Electrocatalysis Carbon Dioxide Reduction

Electrocatalytic CO₂ reduction have been a promising route for CO₂ conversion and dealing with the environmental pollution,because it can be driven by renewable electricity and pursued at ambient temperatures and pressures,is one of the sustainable chemical routes.However,the effective CO₂ reduction reaction（CO₂RR）rely on the development of effective electrocatalysts that are active,selective and stable.In recents,copper is highly attractive due to its low cost and its advantage to generate various hydrocarbon products.Nevertheless,the CO₂ reduction on polycrystalline Cu-based electrodes still require large overpotentials and the selectivity of hydrocarbons is limited by the competing hydrogen evolution reaction.In this work,we designed and synthesized a set of feasible Cu-based nano materials,which are low cost,effective for electrochemistry CO₂RR,then we tested the electrochemistry performance of the Cu-based nano materials for CO₂RR and new energy storage system.The main works are described as following:（1）we report a hydrothermal synthesized of hollow CuS microcubes（h-CuS MCs）through an ions exchange reaction of the Cu₂O microcube（Cu₂O MC）precursor.A variety of characteristic techniques,were performed to study the morphology,crystalline structure,and surface properties.Systematic electrochemical studies demonstrate that the h-CuS MCs due to the special crystalline structure shows the excellent electrocatalytic performance for electrochemistry CO₂RR,as evidenced by a rather low overpotential（-200 m V vs.RHE）and the 32.75%faradaic efficiency for CO production.（2）Surface reconstructed mesoporous Cu nanorods（M-Cu NDs）CO₂RR electrocatalysts are designed and synthesized with SBA-15 as the hard template.After a series of characteristic techniques and electrochemistry tests,we demonstrate that M-Cu NDs electrocatalysts show better electrochemistry activity and excellent selectivity for CO₂RR,with the lower overpotential（-380 mV vs.RHE）and the 30%faradaic efficiency for formic acid production.Based on these advantages,we propose a new type of primary Zn-CO₂ battery with an asymmetric electrolyte.In which,M-Cu NDs for CO₂ reduction reaction（CO₂RR）as cathode and Zn oxidation reaction as anode.The proposed Zn-CO₂ battery shows maximum power density of 1.01 mW cm^-2,specific capacity of 570.99 mAh g^-1,and energy density of 195.26 Wh kg^-1during discharge.Moreover,we demonstrate the as-developed hybrids batteries can not only provide an output voltage of 0.30 V,but also produce 30%faradic efficiency of formic acid production at a discharge current density of 1 mA cm^-2.