Ni–Al Films on Glassy Carbon Electrodes Generate an Array of Oxygenated Organics from CO2

Abstract

The transformation of CO2 into chemical feedstocks or fuels is an attractive goal, but catalysts capable of generating useful, multicarbon products have been challenging to design. Here, thin films of the intermetallic Ni3Al on glassy carbon are found to be electrocatalytic for aqueous CO2 reduction. At–1.38 V vs Ag/AgCl, Ni3Al films produce a range of C1, C2, and C3 oxygenated organic species including 1-propanol and methanol at Faradaic efficiencies that are competitive with single-metal electrodes reported in the literature. To the best of our knowledge, Ni3Al on glassy carbon is the only noncopper-containing material shown to generate C3 products.