Transforming CO2 to useful carbon-based fuels or chemicals contribute to mitigating the environmental problems and balancing the carbon cycle. Electrochemical CO2 reduction has become a promising routes because of the recent research in generating renewable electricity from solar and wind. However, One problem is that the more kinetically preferred H2 evolution reaction (HER) often reduces the selectivity of CO2 reduction in aqueous phase. Herein, we synthesized a hybrid material composed of pyrolyzed zeolitic imidazolate frameworks (ZIFs) and multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs), which not only shows nearly 100% CO Faradaic efficiency (CO-FE) and a current density up to 7.7 mA cm-2 but also can keep high CO2 reduction activity and selectivity in a longtime. By comparing the catalyst result of ZIF-FA and ZIF-CNT-FA (figure 1), We found that the MWCNT support is crucial to achieving superior selectivity owing to expedited CO2 transport in the mesoporous structure constructed by MWCNTs and enhanced electron transport on the MWCNT network. In summary, this work provides a new pathway for the designing N-doped porous carbon catalysts for CO2 reduction and highlights the significance of optimizing mass transport and electron in turning catalysts with high CO2 reduction activity and selectivity.

Electrochemical reduction of CO2 catalyzed by pyrolyzed ZIFs supported on carbon nanotube networks

2019 Fall National Meeting

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