Solar fuel production is an important technological challenge, considering that the energy of sunlight that strikes the earth's surface in an hour is sufficient to meet our energy demands for a year.Irrespective of the approach that is pursued, oxygen evolution from water is the critical reaction, because water is the only cheap, clean and abundant source that is capable of completing the redox cycle for producing either hydrogen (from H2O) or carbonaceous fuels (from CO2) on a terawatt scale. Here, we will discuss our recent development of selective and robust CO2 reduction electrocatalyst. We will present a nanoporous Ag electrocatalyst, which is able to electrochemically reduce CO2 to CO with a ~92% selectivity at a rate (i.e. current) of over 3000 times higher than its polycrystalline counterpart under a moderate overpotential of less than 0.50 V. Such an exceptionally high activity is a result of a large electrochemical surface area (ca. 150 times larger) and intrinsically high activities (ca. 20 times higher) compared to polycrystalline Ag.

Nanoporous materials for electrocatalytic CO<sub>2</sub> reduction

248th National Meeting (2014)

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Nanoporous materials for electrocatalytic CO2 reduction

Nanoporous materials for electrocatalytic CO₂ reduction