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Efficient Electrochemical Reduction of CO 2 to HCOOH over Sub‐2 nm SnO 2 Quantum Wires with Exposed Grain Boundaries
Author(s) -
Liu Subiao,
Xiao Jing,
Lu Xue Feng,
Wang Jiong,
Wang Xin,
Lou Xiong Wen David
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
angewandte chemie
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1521-3757
pISSN - 0044-8249
DOI - 10.1002/ange.201903613
Subject(s) - electrochemistry , reactivity (psychology) , faraday efficiency , materials science , grain boundary , quantum dot , density functional theory , nanoparticle , nanotechnology , chemistry , electrode , computational chemistry , metallurgy , medicine , microstructure , alternative medicine , pathology
Electrochemical reduction of CO 2 could mitigate environmental problems originating from CO 2 emission. Although grain boundaries (GBs) have been tailored to tune binding energies of reaction intermediates and consequently accelerate the CO 2 reduction reaction (CO 2 RR), it is challenging to exclusively clarify the correlation between GBs and enhanced reactivity in nanostructured materials with small dimension (<10 nm). Now, sub‐2 nm SnO 2 quantum wires (QWs) composed of individual quantum dots (QDs) and numerous GBs on the surface were synthesized and examined for CO 2 RR toward HCOOH formation. In contrast to SnO 2 nanoparticles (NPs) with a larger electrochemically active surface area (ECSA), the ultrathin SnO 2 QWs with exposed GBs show enhanced current density (j), an improved Faradaic efficiency (FE) of over 80 % for HCOOH and ca. 90 % for C1 products as well as energy efficiency (EE) of over 50 % in a wide potential window; maximum values of FE (87.3 %) and EE (52.7 %) are achieved.