Continuous anthropogenic emissions of CO2, a powerful greenhouse gas, are considered as the main cause of the climate change. The CO2 electroreduction reaction (CO2ERR) has been proposed as a promising solution to mitigate the effects of this harmful gas, since the conversion of CO2 into value-added chemicals can be performed in aqueous medium and under mild reaction conditions. Moreover, the energy required for the electroreduction to take place can be easily obtained from renewable sources. Nevertheless, some limitations must be overcome: highly active catalysts with a good selectivity and stability are necessary for a successful scale-up to industrial applications. Based on this need, several catalytic materials have been tested as cathodes, particularly metallic materials have shown outstanding performances but they are usually obtained by complex synthesis methods. In this sense, the aim of this work consists on a description of a simple synthesis procedure to obtain indium nanoparticles (In NPs) and indium nanoparticles supported on carbon black (InC NPs), to study their performance as cathode on CO2ERR. The nanoparticles were synthesized and washed with economical reagents under soft conditions. Electrochemical measurements were carried out by means of cyclic voltammetry sweeps and chronoamperometric methods. Both, In NPs and InC NPs based cathodes, exhibit high activities (FE around 93,8% and 80,4% respectively), showing excellent selectivities towards the production of formate at -1.6 V vs Ag|AgCl electrode.

Facile synthesis method for the production of indium nanoparticles as a catalyst for CO2 electroreduction reaction

ACS Spring 2022

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