Research Progress of Carbon Dioxide Electrocatalytic Reduction Catalysts

Abstract

Electrocatalytic CO reduction holds promise for converting the greenhouse gas CO into fuels and chemicals with economic value, making it one of the critical technologies for realizing cyclic utilization of carbon resources. The core of current research lies in the development of catalysts. Among metal catalysts, single-atom catalysts exhibit outstanding activity due to their extremely high atomic utilization efficiency. By finely regulating the interaction between metal nanoparticles such as Fe, Ni, and Cu and carbon supports, the reaction pathway can be guided, significantly enhancing the selectivity of target products like CO or C species. Doping carbon materials with heteroatoms such as nitrogen and silicon can effectively adjust their surface electronic structure and construct active sites capable of efficiently activating CO. Looking ahead, breakthroughs in this technology need to be advanced from multiple dimensions. People can leverage artificial intelligence to accelerate catalyst innovation, optimize the structure of electrolyzers to enhance the mass transfer process, and couple renewable energy power to effectively reduce operating costs. The way for industrial application is thus paved.