Homogeneous Vacancies-Enhanced Orbital Hybridization for Selective and Efficient CO2-to-CO Electrocatalysis

Crafting vacancies offers an efficient route to upgrade the selectivity and productivity of nanomaterials for CO2 electroreduction. However, defective nanoelectrocatalysts bear catalytically active vacancies mostly on their surface, with the rest of the interior atoms adiaphorous for CO2-to-product conversion. Herein, taking nanosilver as a prototype, we arouse the catalytic ability of internal atoms by creating homogeneous vacancies realized via electrochemical reconstruction of silver halides. The homogeneous vacancies-rich nanosilver, compared to the surface vacancies-dominated counterpart, features a more positive d-band center to trigger an intensified hybridization of the Ag_d orbital with the C_P orbital of the *COOH intermediate, leading to an accelerated CO2-to-CO transformation. These structural and electronic merits allow a large-area (9 cm-2) electrode to generate nearly pure CO with a CO/H2 Faradaic efficiency ratio of 6932 at an applied current of 7.5 A. These findings highlight the potential of designing new-type defects in realizing the industrialization of electrocatalytic CO2 reduction.