Anchoring Cs+ Ions on Carbon Vacancies for Selective CO2 Electroreduction to CO at High Current Densities in Membrane Electrode Assembly Electrolyzers.

Abstract

Electrolyte cations have been demonstrated to effectively enhance the rate and selectivity of the electrochemical CO2 reduction reaction (CO2RR), yet their implementation in electrolyte-free membrane electrode assembly (MEA) electrolyzer presents significant challenges. Herein, an anchored cation strategy that immobilizes Cs+ on carbon vacancies was designed and innovatively implemented in MEA electrolyzer, enabling highly efficient CO2 electroreduction over commercial silver catalyst. Our approach achieves a CO partial current density of approximately 500 mA cm-2 in the MEA electrolyzer, three-fold enhancement compared to pure Ag. In situ Raman and theoretical analyses, combined with machine learning potentials, reveal anchored Cs induces an electric field that significantly promotes the adsorption of *CO2 - intermediates through performing muti-point energy calculations on each structure. Furthermore, reduced adsorption of *OH intermediates effectively hampers competing hydrogen evolution reaction, as clarified by disk electrode experiments and density functional theory studies. Additionally, coupling our system with commercial polysilicon solar cells yields a notable solar-to-CO energy conversion efficiency of 8.3 %. This study opens a new avenue for developing effective cation-promoting strategy in MEA reactors for efficient CO2RR.