CO2 is expected to be efficient in electro catalytic reduction

In recent years, the research on the economical production of small molecule products produced by electro-catalytic reduction CO2 has been widely concerned, but how to achieve the goal of maintaining high catalytic efficiency at negative voltage and thus achieving high catalytic yield has always been a difficult research point. Recently, the environmentally friendly catalytic process research group of Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Process of the Chinese Academy of Sciences made a breakthrough in the above-mentioned fields, designing a new two-dimensional/zero-dimensional niobium oxide nano-sheet/nitrogen doped graphene quantum dot (Bi2O3-NGQDs) composite catalyst.
This new catalyst, developed by a team led by Liu Licheng, a researcher in the Environmentally Friendly Catalytic Process Research Group, can be used to efficiently electrocatalytically reduce CO2 to generate foric acid, successfully solving the problem of reducing catalytic efficiency in the negative voltage range .
of previous studies, the research team found that the decrease of electrocatalytic efficiency in the negative voltage range was mainly due to the insufficient concentration of CO2 molecules and reaction intermediates adsorbed on the surface of the catalyst during the reaction process. In the study, the researchers used amino groups on the surface of NGQDs to enhance the adsorption energy of the main catalyst to the adsorption state CO, while accelerating the transfer of charge during the electrocatalytic reaction. The perfect synergy between niobium oxide nanoskeles and nitrogen-doped graphene quantum dots allows the composite catalyst to maintain an average current efficiency of up to 95.6% over a negative voltage range. This work provides a new strategy to improve the catalytic efficiency of other metal oxide catalysts in the negative voltage range.
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