Boosting electrochemical CO2 reduction to formate using SnO2/graphene oxide with amide linkages†
Abstract
Selective electrochemical CO2 reduction to formic acid is an appealing strategy to achieve efficient utilization of CO2. Modification of the catalytic interface with organic linkers has been proven to promote the conversion of CO2 to CO, but the highly selective generation of formic acid is still a challenge. Herein, modification of the interface of graphene oxide (GO) with amide linkages to anchor SnO2 nanoparticles is presented to catalyze the CO2 reduction reaction (CO2RR). As expected, the as-synthesized SnO2/tert-GO shows a competitive high cathodic faradaic efficiency (FE) of 84.4% for formate at −0.96 V and shows long-term stability for the CO2RR. Further, density functional theory (DFT) calculations indicated that amide linkages facilitate the conversion of CO2 to formate.
- This article is part of the themed collection: Journal of Materials Chemistry A Emerging Investigators