Br-Doped CuO Multilamellar Mesoporous Nanosheets with Oxygen Vacancies and Cetyltrimethyl Ammonium Cations Adsorption for Optimizing Intermediate Species and Their Adsorption Behaviors toward CO2 Electroreduction to Ethanol with a High Faradaic Efficiency.

Abstract

It is a prospective tactic to actualize the carbon cycle via CO2 electroreduction reaction (CO2ER) into ethanol, where the crucial point is to design highly active and selective electrocatalysts. In this work, Br-doped CuO multilamellar mesoporous nanosheets with oxygen vacancies and cetyltrimethyl ammonium (CTA+) cations adsorption were synthesized on Cu foam by one-step liquid-phase method at room temperature. The nanosheets with numerous mesopores and rough edges provided abundant active sites for the adsorption of CO2 molecules and brought about a long retention time for intermediates. The dopant of Br- ions induced copious oxygen vacancies on CuO lattices, thereby reducing the activation energy of CO2 molecules and optimizing intermediate species and their adsorption behaviors, while adsorbed CTA+ cations modulated the O affinity of the Cu sites, favoring *OCH2CH3 intermediate converting to ethanol. The optimized Br1.95%-CuO can effectively catalyze CO2ER to C2H5OH in 0.1 M KHCO3. The faradaic efficiency of C2H5OH reached 53.3% with the partial current density of 7.1 mA cm-2 at a low potential of -0.6 V. In addition, after 14 h CO2ER test at -0.6 V, the current density and faradaic efficiency of C2H5OH on Br1.95%-CuO retained 99.6 and 93.9% of their original values, respectively, indicating its prominent catalytic stability. This work provided a novel strategy for designing a CuO catalyst by nonmetal doping and long-chain organic molecules adsorption with multiple active sites for optimizing intermediate species and their adsorption behaviors toward CO2ER to ethanol.