Promoting Pd-Catalyzed Conversion of CO to Formate

Abstract

Electrochemical CO2 reduction offers exciting opportunities in turning the waste carbon into value-added chemicals/fuels. Among different CO2 reduction products, formate has attracted particular interest, as it shows promising near-term economic feasibility. Pd-based electrocatalysts have demonstrated excellent selectivity towards formate production, however, only within a narrow potential window of 0 V to -0.25 V vs. RHE. It has shown that Pd-based electrocatalysts suffer from the potential-dependent deactivation pathways (α-PdH to -PdH phase transition, CO poisoning, etc.) and quickly loss their activity towards formate production. Thus, it is desirable to establish new strategies to enable Pd-based CO2 reduction over a broader potential window to achieve both energy efficient and practical relevant formate production.In this work, we discovered that ligands, i.e., polyvinylpyrrolidone, decorated Pd surface exhibits an unexpected promotion effect on CO2 electroreduction. Specifically, these decorated Pd can afford selective formate production at a much-extended potential window (beyond -0.7 V vs. RHE) with significantly improved activity (14-times enhancement at -0.4 V vs. RHE) compared to that of the pristine Pd surface. Combined results from physical/electrochemical characterizations, kinetic analysis and first principal simulations suggest that the capping ligand can effectively stabilize the Pd species with high valence state (Pdẟ+) resulted from the catalyst synthesis and pretreatments. These Pdẟ+ species are responsible for the inhibited phase transition of α-PdH to β-PdH, as well as the suppression of CO and H2 formation. Overall, our study confers a desired catalyst design principle: introducing positive charges into Pd-catalysts to enable efficient and stable CO2 to formate conversion.