Amorphous CeO2–Cu Heterostructure Enhances CO2 Electroreduction to Multicarbon Alcohols

Electrochemical conversion of carbon dioxide (CO2) gas to value-added chemicals such as multicarbon (C2+) alcohols is a promising and attractive decarbonization strategy. However, there are tremendous challenges in tuning the intrinsic activity and selectivity of the catalysts to produce C2+ alcohols. In this work, we prepared a CeO2–Cu composite catalyst via a combination of metallurgy and dealloying method. The interfacial sites of amorphous CeO2–Cu heterostructure improve the adsorption of key reaction intermediates *CO and promote the C–C coupling. Significantly, they also stabilize *CH2CHO at the bifurcation step, steering the reaction pathway toward the formation of C2+ alcohols over ethylene. The CeO2–Cu catalyst achieves a remarkable faradaic efficiency of 32.9% ± 2.6% for C2+ alcohols at −0.6 V vs RHE. This work demonstrates an effective strategy of improving the intrinsic activity and selectivity of the Cu-based catalysts for the generation of C2+ alcohols.