Selective CO2 Reduction to Ethylene Over a Wide Potential Window by Copper Nanowires with High Density of Defects

Abstract

Electrochemical reduction of CO₂ to ethylene using renewable electricity is an attractive approach for sustainable carbon recycling. In situ generation of defects in catalysts is found to be a promising method to guarantee high ethylene production from CO₂ with high stability. In this study, copper nanowires are prepared in situ with a high density of defects for electrocatalytic CO₂ reduction. These defects effectively improve C–C coupling, thus realizing a remarkable performance toward CO₂ reduction to C₂ products. The obtained copper nanowires showed a high selectivity of ∼79% for C₂ products and >58% for C₂H₄. More importantly, a significantly wide potential window of 500 mV was realized for the selective production of C₂H₄ with FE(C₂H₄) >55%. Finally, in situ Raman spectroscopy revealed that Cu⁰ is the real reactive site for the electrocatalytic CO₂ reduction reaction.