CO2 electroreduction on copper-cobalt nanoparticles: Size and composition effect

Bernal, Miguel; Bagger, Alexander; Scholten, Fabian; Sinev, Ilya; Bergmann, Arno; Ahmadi, Mahdi; Rossmeisl, Jan; Roldan Cuenya, Beatriz

doi:10.1016/j.nanoen.2018.08.027

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT

Add to Basket

Local TagsRelease HistoryDetailsSummary

Released

Journal Article

CO₂ electroreduction on copper-cobalt nanoparticles: Size and composition effect

MPS-Authors

/persons/resource/persons214068

Bergmann, Arno
Interface Science, Fritz Haber Institute, Max Planck Society;

/persons/resource/persons22020

Roldan Cuenya, Beatriz
Department of Physics, Ruhr-University Bochum;
Interface Science, Fritz Haber Institute, Max Planck Society;
Department of Physics, University of Central Florida;

External Resource

No external resources are shared

Fulltext (restricted access)

There are currently no full texts shared for your IP range.

Fulltext (public)

There are no public fulltexts stored in PuRe

Supplementary Material (public)

There is no public supplementary material available

Citation

Bernal, M., Bagger, A., Scholten, F., Sinev, I., Bergmann, A., Ahmadi, M., et al. (2018). CO₂ electroreduction on copper-cobalt nanoparticles: Size and composition effect. Nano Energy, 53, 27-36. doi:10.1016/j.nanoen.2018.08.027.

Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0002-170C-8

Abstract

Understanding the changes that a catalyst may experience on its surface during a reaction is crucial in order to establish structure/composition-reactivity correlations. Here, we report on bimetallic size-selected Cu_100-xCo_x nanoparticle (NP) catalysts for CO₂ electroreduction reaction (CO₂RR) and we identify the optimum Cu/Co ratio and NP size leading to improved activity and selectivity. Operando X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) and quasi in situ X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) provided insight into the morphological, structural, and chemical transformations underwent by the CuCo NPs during CO₂RR. We illustrate that the as-prepared state of the bimetallic NPs is drastically different from the structure and surface composition of the working catalyst. Under electrochemical conditions, a reduction of both initially oxidized metallic species was observed, accompanied by Cu surface segregation. Density functional theory (DFT) results from a Cu₃X model were used to describe the surface segregation. In order to extract mechanistic understanding, the activity of the experimental Cu and CuCo NPs towards CO₂RR was described via DFT in terms of the interaction of Cu facets under expansion and compression with key reaction intermediates, in particular CO* and COOH*.