Honeycomb-like CuO@C for electroreduction of carbon dioxide to ethylene

The electrochemical CO2 reduction (ECR) of high-value multicarbon products is an urgent challenge for catalysis and energy resources. Herein, we reported a simple polymer thermal treatment strategy for preparing honeycomb-like [email protected] catalysts for ECR with remarkable C2H4 activity and selectivity. The honeycomb-like structure favored the enrichment of more CO2 molecules to improve the CO2-to-C2H4 conversion. Further experimental results indicate that the CuO loaded on amorphous carbon with a calcination temperature of 600 °C ([email protected]) has a Faradaic efficiency (FE) as high as 60.2% towards C2H4 formation, significantly outperforming pure CuO-600 (18.3%), [email protected] (45.1%) and [email protected] (41.4%), respectively. The interaction between the CuO nanoparticles and amorphous carbon improves the electron transfer and accelerates the ECR process. Furthermore, in situ Raman spectra demonstrated that [email protected] can adsorb more adsorbed *CO intermediates, which enriches the CC coupling kinetics and promotes C2H4 production. This finding may offer a paradigm to design high-efficiency electrocatalysts, which can be beneficial to achieve the “double carbon goal.”