A novel one-step calcination tailored single-atom iron and nitrogen co-doped carbon material catalyst for the selective reduction of CO2 to CO

Abstract

Single atom Fe-N-C based electrocatalysts are the most promising candidates for industrial applications of reduction of CO2. However, preparation of Fe-N-C catalyst often involves complex procedures and expensive precursors/reagents. In this work, we developed a novel one-step calcination method to tailor single-atom Fe-N-C catalyst for CO2 reduction. The maximum Faraday efficiency of CO (FECO) and the Tafel slope of Fe-N-C material was 73% and 68 mv dec−1, respectively, which was much higher than that of the pristine N-C material. The CO2 electroreduction products were CO and H2 with a total Faraday efficiency of 100%, indicating that the Fe-N-C material had high selectivity on CO2 reduction to CO. The designed Fe-Nx structure on the Fe-N-C material acted as a highly active site, and the abundant functional groups and microporous structure resulted in high catalytic performance of Fe-N-C material. This work demonstrates that the tailored single-atom Fe-N-C catalyst by one-step calcination has broad application prospects in the electrochemical reduction of CO2.