Bimetallic effects in the carbon dioxide electroreduction

Abstract

As a clean and sustainable technology, electrocatalytic reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2RR) occupies a central position in the global energy transformation and climate change strategy. Compared with single metallic catalysts, bimetallic catalysts have many advantages, such as synergistic effect between bimetals, enhanced CO2 adsorption capacity, and lower reaction energy barrier, which make them widely used in the CO2RR for the generation of multi-carbon products. This review systematically sorts out the latest advances in the bimetallic effects for the CO2RR. In this paper, we start with a classified introduction on the CO2RR mechanisms, followed by a comprehensive discussion of the structure-activity relationships of various bimetallic catalysts, including regulation of metal centers, regulation of the distance between metal sites, regulation of the coordination environment, interface engineering, and strain engineering. Next, we showcase the advantages of bimetallic catalysts in the CO2RR. Then, the research progress of typical bimetallic catalysts for the ECO2RR is discussed, including diatomic catalysts, bimetallic alloy, bimetallic MOFs and bimetallic COFs. Finally, we summarize the challenges faced today from the five aspects of product selectivity, catalyst stability, product purification, theoretical simulations and in situ characterization techniques, and put forward the research direction to promote the industrialization process of CO2RR.