Abstract
Ever-growing anthropogenic activity has increased global energy demands, resulting in growing concentrations of greenhouse gases such as CO2 in the atmosphere. The electroreduction of CO2 has been proposed as a potential solution for reducing anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Despite the promising results obtained so far, some limitations hinder large-scale applications, especially those associated with the activity and selectivity of electrocatalysts. A good number of metal catalysts have been studied to overcome this limitation, but the high cost and low earth abundance of some of these materials are important barriers. In this sense, carbon materials doped with heteroatoms such as N, B, S, and F have been proposed as cheaper and widely available alternatives to metal catalysts. This review summarizes the latest advances in the utilization of carbon-doped materials for the electroreduction of CO2, with a particular emphasis on the synthesis procedures and the electrochemical performance of the resulting materials.
Highlights
The ever-growing human population, along with the rapid development of some countries, have resulted in a steady increase of the energy demand
A good number of preparation methods have been developed to synthetize nitrogen-doped carbon materials, including in situ and post-treatment doping approaches [43]
Density functional theory (DFT) calculations revealed that boron and phosphorous can in the carbon structure, since the electronegativity of this element is very similar to that of carbon synergistically promote the binding and activation of the CO2 molecule
Summary
The ever-growing human population, along with the rapid development of some countries, have resulted in a steady increase of the energy demand. Wu et al [46] provided extensive mechanistic information on this reaction over carbon-based materials and identified the main challenges of the process These authors analyzed the linear scaling relations of metals and discussed how this prevents the binding energies of intermediates from being decoupled on these surfaces, constraining the reactivity to certain C1 products (CO vs CH4 ) or increasing the overpotential for the formation of C2 products. The utilization of carbon-doped materials allows the limitation imposed by the classical scaling relation of metals to be overcome and modifies the strength of adsorption of reaction intermediates, resulting in lower overpotentials compared to metal catalysts These authors discussed the performance of these materials (mostly N-doped) in terms of their ability to generate C1 or C2 products. Our review has a different time frame compared to the above works, being mostly constrained to 2019–2020, with the aim of capturing the rapid development of this area
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
