The mission of the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis is to develop a prototype device for the photoelectrochemical reduction of CO2 to fuels using sunlight. Current CO2 reduction catalysts, however, do not display enough efficiency or selectivity to be viable. To design improved catalysts, a fundamental understanding of the catalytic mechanisms for CO2 reduction is needed. We present a combined grazing incidence X-ray absorption spectroscopy (GI-XAS) and grazing incidence X-ray diffraction (GI-XRD) study of metallic and metallic alloy catalysts for CO2 reduction under operating conditions. These techniques allow probing of the top 2-3 nm of the catalyst surface, and reveal structural and chemical evolution of the catalyst surface, and its electronic interactions with adsorbed species formed during catalysis.

Multimodal x-ray characterization of solar fuels catalysts under operation

254th National Meeting (2017)

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